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Postdoctoral Alumni

Ponzoni

Dr. Mary Hongying Cheng, PhD in Chemical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (New York, USA)

 Email:
 Current AffiliationAssociate Director, Computational Drug Development, Supernus Pharmaceuticals Inc. Rockville, Maryland
 Research Interests: Modeling, medicinal chem, ion transport, protein-lipid interactions.
Ponzoni

Dr. Burak Kaynak, PhD Physics, Bogazici University, Turkey

 Email:
 Current AffiliationSenior Research Scientist, Salk Institute for Biological Studies. San Diego, California
 Research Interests: Mathematical and Computational Physics, Multi-scale modeling and stoachastic simulation.
Ponzoni

Dr. James Krieger, PhD Computational Biology, University of Cambridge, UK

 Email:
 Current AffiliationMarie Curie Fellow for postdoctoral studies, National Center for Biotechnology, University of Madrid, Spain
 Research Interests: Structural biol and bioinformatics; protein dynamics and signaling.
Ponzoni

Dr. Hongchun Li, PhD in Chemical Biology, Xiamen University, China

 Email: hongchun.li@siat.ac.cn
 Current AffiliationAssociate Research Professor at the Research Center for Computer-aided Drug Discovery, Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology Chinese Academy of Sciences. Guang Dong Province, Shenzhen, China.
 Research Interests: Protein-protein and protein-drug interactions, quantitative systems pharmacology, signature dynamics of proteins.
Ponzoni

Dr. Luca Ponzoni, PhD in Molecular and Statistical Biophysics, SISSA, Trieste, Italy

 Email: lponzoni@keiserlab.org
 Current AffiliationPostdoctoral Scholar, The Keiser Lab in the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at UCSF. San Francisco, California.
 Research Interests: Structural Biology.
Ruminska

Dr. Karolina Mikulska-Ruminska, PhD in Biophysics, Nicolaus Copernicus U

 Email: bastim13@gmail.com
 Current AffiliationAssistant Professor, Nicolaus Copernicus University
 Research Interests: Protein structure and dynamics, protein-protein and protein-lipid interactions, atomic force microscopy and nanomechanics, ferroptotic effects of PEBP1-lipoxygenase interactions.
Mert Gur

Dr. Mert Gur, Visiting Faculty Scholar

 Email: qurme@itu.edu.tr
 Current AffiliationAssociate Professor, ITU, Department of Mechanical Engineering
 Research Interests: Biomolecular machines and motors, Computational simulationa nd modeling, Molecular Dynamics, Statistical Mechanics and THermodynamics, Drug design, Neuroscience and Protein physics, dynamics and engineering.
Elia Zomot

Dr. Elia Zomot, PhD in Biology, Hebrew U, Israel

 Email: eliaz.1980@gmail.com
 Current Affiliation Research Scientist, UKKO, Israel
 Research Interests: Sodium-coupled neurotransmitter symporters (NNSs); chloride channeling by transporters; potential drugs that target neurotransmitter transporters; co-evolution of amino acids in glutamate transporter and NNS families.
Ignacio

Dr. Ignacio General, PhD in Physics, North Carolina State UNC
 Email: ijgeneral@pitt.edu
 Current Affiliation Assistant Professor, School of Science and Technology, Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina
 Research Interests: Computational study of (bio)molecular structure and stability, via coarse grain models and molecular dynamics; free energy and entropy methods; non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.
Amit Srivastava

Dr. Amit Srivastava, PhD in Physics, Banaras Hindu University
 Email: amitphysics@gmail.com
 Current Affiliation
 Research Interests: Coarse-grained models to study the protein structure and dynamics, Biophysics and Statistical Physics.
Kristina Paris

Kristina Paris, PhD in Chemistry, Rutgers U

 Email: kristina.paris@gmail.com
 Current Affiliation Instructor, Department of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh
 Research Interests: Computer-aided drug discovery; receptor reorganization in protein/ligand and protein/protein interactions.
Divesh Bhatt

Dr. Divesh Bhatt, PhD Chemical Engineering, UC Berkeley
 Email: divesh.bhatt@gmail.com
 Current Affiliation Lead Scientist at Kimberly Clark
 Research Interests: Systems modeling of cellular biochemical pathways, conformational transitions in biomolecules.
Jason DeChancie

Jason DeChancie, PhD in Chemistry, UCLA

 Email:
 Current Affiliation Biomedical Research Analyst at American Systems, Washington D.C.
 Research Interests: Prediction of protein structure, dynamics, and rates of reactions using molecular dynamics, quantum mechanics, and combined quantum mechanical and molecular mechanical methods.
Filippo Pullara

Dr. Filippo Pullara, Research Associate

 Email: fip1@pitt.edu
 Current AffiliationSpintellx
 Research Interests: Structural-dynamic-functional aspects of neurotransmitter Na+ coupled transporters involved in neurotransmission regulation. Spatio-temporal model of dopamine transporter function and regulation in neurons: from molecular to cellular level.
Eran Eyal

Eran Eyal , PhD in Bioinformatics, Ben-Gourion U
 Email: eyal.eran@gmail.com
eran.eyal@sheba.health.gov.il
 Current AffiliationSenior Algorithm Developer at Evogene
Eran's home page
 Research Interests: Correlated sites in proteins; correlated substitutions of amino acid pairs (P2P website); anisotropic network model analysis of protein dynamics (ANM website)
Tim Lezon<

Dr. Tim Lezon, PhD in Physics, Penn State U

 Email: lezon@pitt.edu
 Current Affiliation Principal Scientist, Applied Math, USA
Tim Lezon's Website
 Research Interests: Application of coarse-grained models to explore protein structure and dynamics; enhancement of elastic network models to account for non-uniform interactions and solvent effects.
Chakra Chennubhotla

Chakra Chennubhotla, PhD in Comp Sci, U of Toronto
 Email:
 Current Affiliation Co-Founder, President and CTO, Spintellx, Pittsburgh USA
 Research Interests: Signal propagation in allosteric systems and GroEL dynamics and underlying Markov propagation stochastics
Indira Shrivastava

Dr. Indira Shrivastava, Associate Service Fellow

 Email: ihs2@pitt.edu
 Current AffiliationAssociate Service Fellow, CDC/NIOSH/HELD/NIOSH/EAB
910 Willowdale Rd, Morgantown WV 26505
 Research Interests: Combining multi-scale computational models, such as MD simulations and ENMs, with focus on the dynamics of membrane proteins, dioxygenases and other enzymes. I am currently analysing gene-expression data to measure effects of exposure to Engineered Nanomaterials (ENMS), to identify functional pathways which are enriched due to ENM exposures.
Dror Tobi

Dror Tobi, PhD in Biochemistry, Hebrew U

 Email: drorto@ariel.ac.il
 Current Affiliation Senior Lecturer, Ariel University Center of Samaria
 Research Interests: Protein docking potentials; n-gram patterns; allosteric transition of hemoglobin from T to R state studied by ANM.
Andrew J. Rader

Andrew J. Rader, PhD in Physics & Chem,
Michigan State U
 Email: ajrader@iupui.edu
 Current Affiliation Director of Data Science, DMC Insurance, Inc., Indianapolis, IN
 Research Interests: Computer-aided drug discovery, Pharmaceutical sciences, Protein Folding Cores & Pathways, Biomolecular Dynamics, and Multi-scale Modeling
Ramaswamy Amutha

Ramaswamy Amutha, PhD in Physics, U of Madras
 Email: amutha_ramu@yahoo.com
 Current Affiliation Assistant Professor, Centre for Bioinformatics, School of Life Sciences, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India
 Research Interests: Biomolecular Dynamics Simulations, Drug Design and Ab inito Quantum Calculations.
Lucy Xu

Lucy (Chunyan) Xu, PhD in Biol Sci, U of Pittsburgh
 Email: xu_lucy2002@yahoo.com
 Current Affiliation Director, Clinical Biomarkers Research, Eisai, Inc. NY
 Research Interests: Computational Prediction of Allosteric Structural Changes by a Simple Mechanical Model: Application to Hemoglobin T --> R Transition
Rajan Munshi

Rajan Munshi, PhD in Biology, U of Mississippi
 Email: Rajan_Munshi@sra.com
 Current Affiliation Milky Way Research Foundation - Chief Administrative Officer
 Research Interests: Establishment and coordination of the BBSI for simulation and visualization of biological systems

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