Design and Synthesis of Antiviral Small Molecules
I design and synthesize antiviral small molecules across multiple viral targets, integrating medicinal chemistry, structure–activity relationships, and biological evaluation to develop and refine mechanistically distinct inhibitor series. My work spans the progression from initial chemical scaffolds to optimized antiviral leads, with synthesis guided by both experimental activity and structural insight.
Computational Drug Design
I use structure-based virtual screening, molecular docking, molecular dynamics, and free-energy methods to identify and characterize druggable sites on viral proteins and to prioritize compounds for experimental evaluation. In the RSV polymerase program, this approach helped define an allosteric inhibitor-binding region and guided the development of antiviral chemotypes whose mechanism was further supported by resistance mapping and structural analysis.
Structural Virology & Viral Protein Dynamics
I investigate how structural changes in viral proteins alter their function, molecular interactions, and susceptibility to antiviral or immune pressure. By combining structural modeling, molecular dynamics, mutational analysis, experimental evolution, and structural biology, I examine how apparently small sequence changes can propagate through a viral protein and reshape biologically important interaction surfaces. In RSV F, this work revealed how a distal mutation can remodel multiple neutralizing epitopes and influence antibody recognition.
See the published work that’s come out of this research.
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