Engineering faculty member wins NSF CAREER Award for protein structure work

Assistant professor Debswapna Bhattacharya has received the prestigious National Science Foundation, or NSF, CAREER Award for early career researchers.

Bhattacharya, a computer science and software engineering researcher, has been awarded $557,340 to support his work in protein structure prediction, a scientific field where computational modeling can be used to determine the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Through this project, he will develop novel computational and data-driven methods to substantially improve protein structure refinement, bringing protein models closer to biologically relevant experimental accuracy.

“Structural biology has entered an era of computational modeling,” Bhattacharya said. “Computational models serve as vehicles for studying the structure and dynamics of complex biological macromolecules, such as proteins, to better understand the properties and mechanisms of cells. As such, it is critically important for computationally predicted protein models to reach atomic-level accuracy to be useful in fundamental research."

Read more about Bhattacharya's work by clicking here.