Alumni
- Patel Group roles
- Former PhD Student, 2014–2020
- Dissertation: “Characterizing And Predicting Hydrophobicity At The Nanoscale To Inform Protein Interactions”
- Former Postdoctoral Fellow, 2020–2023
- Founded Protein Design Solutions, LLC.
- Research interests
- Protein hydration, Nanoscale hydrophobicity, Interpretable machine learning
Research interests
During my time in the Patel Group, my research focused on characterizing the strength of water-protein interactions. The surfaces of proteins are extremely complex, both chemically and topographically, and the ways in which proteins disrupt hydrating water structure determine their interaction sites and, ultimately, their functions. We addressed the challenge of characterizing protein surface-water interactions by systematically perturbing protein hydration waters to identify surface patches that interact most weakly with water. I also investigated the underlying topographical and chemical determinants of hydrophobicity at the nanoscale by applying interpretable machine-learning techniques to simple model surfaces.
