Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology; Cancer Metabolomics; development of tools for the prediction of protein structure and function; functional genomics; metabolic pathways, prediction of small molecule ligands for drug discovery, prediction of druggable protein targets, drug design, prediction of DNA binding proteins.

The long term goal of my research is to be able to simulate at molecular detail a single cell. In doing so, one would understand the basic principles of life.

We have just completed a very promising study in Cancer Metabolomics where we have validated a predictive algorithm that can identify novel metabolites with anticancer properties.  We have also developed a new, powerful algorithm that can predict protein function, binding sites and which can be used for rapid screening ligand libraries.  We have developed physics based, atomic potentials for protein structure refinement.  We have demonstrated that the library of all protein folds is above the percolation threshhold, i.e., any protein structure can be related to any other by no more than eight imtermediate structures.

With the outstanding support of the Georgia Research Alliance, the Georgia Institute of Technology is embarking on building a world class program in Systems Biology. The excitement of helping contribute to this goal as well as the quality of life in Georgia is what drew me to Georgia.