Assistant Professor Rachel Karchin of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Institute for Computational Medicine recently received an award of $695K for 3 years from the National Science Foundation. The award, which is part of the NSF’s Advances in Biological Informatics program is entitled “ABI Innovation: Predicting the combined impact of multiple mutations on protein functional adaptation” The study is a collaboration with Dr. Manel Camps of the Department of Environmental Toxicology at University of California, Santa Cruz.

From the Grant abstract:

“This work promotes close interaction between the computational sciences and biology communities: It combines expertise in computational/statistical modeling of mutations in proteins and applied evolutionary genetics in microbial systems. The broader use of this work will be to anticipate the emergence of drug resistance in clinically relevant proteins. It will also have great utility for protein engineers who seek to design proteins with new or improved functions. Furthermore, it will contribute to the design of therapeutic regimens for diseases driven by bacteria or viruses, in which the evolution of drug resistance is commonplace. The educational goals of the project include new course components for undergraduates and graduates at the universities where the project investigators teach and outreach to underrepresented minority students in science and engineering.”

To see details on the full award, click here to view on the NSF website.

Congratulations, and good luck with your research!