People

Dr. José A. Villegas

Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Education

University of Illinois Chicago

Bridge to the Faculty Postdoctoral Scholar in Pharmaceutical Sciences

Weizmann Institute of Science

Postdoctoral Fellow in Structural Biology

University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D. in Chemistry

City University of New York – Brooklyn College

M.A. in Chemistry

University of California Santa Barbara

B.S. in Biochemistry

Arumay Pal

I am a senior computational structural biologist with a PhD in Structural Biology and Bioinformatics and research experience across the United States, Singapore, Israel, France, and India. My expertise includes AI/ML-driven protein and peptide design, structural bioinformatics, molecular modelling and simulation, and structure-based drug discovery.

My current research integrates AI-based structure prediction and peptide and protein design with physics-based modelling and experimental validation. I design proteins and peptides, investigate their properties, and prioritize candidates for experimental testing and optimization. I also perform wet-lab experiments, including peptide synthesis and purification and biophysical and biochemical characterization of designed peptides and their binding partners.

My broader research interest is developing integrated computational–experimental approaches for protein and peptide design, optimization, and therapeutic discovery.

Garrett W. Buzzard

Luke Jesikiewicz

Luke is a postdoctoral researcher hailing from Buffalo, NY. Luke completed his bachelor’s and Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied enantioselective transition-metal catalyzed reactions under the supervision of Professor Peng Liu. Luke has expertise in DFT calculations, organic reaction mechanisms, molecular dynamics simulations, multivariate regression models, and de novo protein design.

Luke’s current research encompasses developing A.I. workflows for the design of de novo α-helical peptide self-assemblies; simulations of peptide self-assembly; computational modelling in drug discovery of small molecule inhibitors of human and viral targets; de novo enzyme design; simulation of catalytic peptide materials.

Jason Shi

Jason is from Wuhan China and is currently 4th year PhD student in lab. Jason works on design peptide inhibitors targeting various bacterial and viral proteins. Outside of school Jason enjoys going to the gym.

Kendall Free

Kai Clark