Algorithms and Methods in Structural Bioinformatics (Computational Biology)

The three-dimensional structure and function of molecules present many challenges and opportunities for developing an understanding of biological systems. With the increasing availability of molecular structures and the advancing accuracy of structure predictions and molecular simulations, the space for algorithmic advancement on many analytical and predictive problems is both broad and deep. To support this field, a rich set of methods and algorithms are available, addressing a variety of important problems such as protein-protein interactions, the effect of mutations on protein structure and function, and protein structure determination. Despite recent advancements in the field, in particular in protein folding with the development of AlphaFold, many problems still remain unsolved.

​Nurit Haspel has been a member of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston since 2009. She received her Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in 2007. Her research lies in the areas of computational structural biology and structural bioinformatics. Her goal is to better understand the structure and flexibility of proteins, to model conformational changes in proteins, and to model protein-protein interactions. In her research, she focuses on both the development of novel algorithms and the application of state-of-the-art existing methodologies to various problems in molecular biology and biochemistry.