Research Interests

Computational method development for membrane protein structure prediction in the Rosetta software (2012 - current):

  • one of the core developers of membrane code in Rosetta
  • implemented RosettaMP, a new framework for modeling membrane proteins in Rosetta, that greatly facilitates development of a variety of new protocols
  • based on this framework, development of new applications for modeling, docking, and design with and without the use of experimental restraints 
  • specific interests: protein-protein docking within the membrane bilayer, predicting the effect of mutations onto membrane protein structure and functionhigh-resolution refinement of large membrane proteins, ligand docking, etc.

Computational and experimental method development for membrane protein structure determination (PhD at Vanderbilt):

  • secondary structure prediction and prediction of trans-membrane spans: BCL::Jufo9D
  • derived a Unified Hydrophobicity Scale from a knowledge-base of protein structures
  • used lanthanide-binding tags to measure paramagnetic NMR restraints on membrane proteins, such as Residual Dipolar Couplings, Paramagnetic Relaxation Enhancements, Pseudo-Contact Shifts