I am a Simbios Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in Stanford’s Bioengineering Department working with Prof. Vijay Pande and Prof. Russ B. Altman as my academic advisors. My primary interest is in the application of computational techniques to improve our understanding of biological processes. At Simbios, I work on developing new algorithms to make use of GPUs as computing platform for the study of proteins, their structure and function. I am interested in how misfolding leads to the formation of protein aggregates, their role in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or type-2 diabetes, and how we can use computational tools to generate new candidate compounds for drug development. I also currently work on implementing modifications to the NAMD-derived ‘Mindy’ software in order to obtain a minimal front-end for running molecular dynamics simulations on graphics processors using the Simbios OpenMM library.

Prior to my appointment at Stanford, I received a triple major BSc degree in computer science, bioinformatics, and biology from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany, and an MPhil in computational biology from the University of Cambridge in England. I completed my PhD in the group of Dr. Michele Vendruscolo, again at Cambridge, developing a new method to incorporate experimental data from NMR spectroscopy in molecular dynamics simulations. I have been interested in a variety of scientific topics and fields including computer graphics, software development, analytical geometry, genetics, and aging.