Our group employs multiscale methods for discovering new interactions and deciphering the molecular details of complex biological processes. Currently, we are primarily interested in applications to molecular parasitology and our main goal is to understand which red-blood cell proteins and protein complexes are manipulated by the malaria parasite. To understand the structural details of this hijacking process, we employ a combination of experimental and computational biophysics approaches. Using cutting-edge approaches, we are able to understand how protein conformations are manipulated by the parasite leading to new insights about the disease process.
Protein functions are increasingly being studied through the lens of artificial intelligence. We focus on AI methods for protein design, engineering and function as a vessel for understanding protein biochemistry. By studying the biases and asking “what do these models know”, we seek to discover new principles that govern the evolutionary, physico-chemical and conformational constraints on proteins.
After an MMath degree at Warwick, I joined the Wellcome Trust Mathematical Genomics CDT at Cambridge culminating in a PhD in Biochemistry supervised by Kathryn Lilley, Laurent Gatto and Paul Kirk. I won the Peter Landshoff prize for outstanding computational biology PhD and was awarded the Fisher memorial trust’s young biometrician award for one of my PhD papers. I was then a research associate in the Oxford Department of Statistics working with Prof. Charlotte Deane and subsequently Florence Nightingale Fellow. I was briefly seconded to the UK Government leading a protein design group and was recently awarded an MRC Career Development Award to start my research group in the Kavli Institute in 2025. I continue as a Todd-Bird Junior Research Fellow at New College until 2027.
