Understanding protein structure, function and dynamics ranks among the most challenging and fascinating problems in the world today. Since the function of a protein is directly related to its three dimensional structure, manipulation of the latter is expected to provide functional diversity. Protein molecules can also be engineered to optimize their activities as well as to alter their pharmacokinetic properties in the case of therapeutically important molecules. I am particularly interested in developing new numerical and computational approaches to these problems, using basic ideas from physics and computer science. This seminar will cover a variety of topics within this scope, including computational geometry for an understanding of protein structures based on their geometry, database mining for the generation of new knowledge based potential functions, and stochastic simulations for the optimization of protein properties.

Thursday, March 29, 2001 @ 2:00 in Keck 102

A reception will be held BEFORE the talk - at 1:30 outside Keck 102

About Patrice Koehl

Patrice Koehl received an Engineering degree in Bioengineering from the Ecole Centrale de Paris in 1984. Afterwards, he spent two years in the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory as a staff scientist, working on simulation of the effects of heavy charged particles on DNA. He then moved back to France, where he received his Ph.D. from Strasbourg University for his work on protein and DNA structure determination by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.

After receiving his Ph.D., he was appointed a staff scientist of the CNRS, France. As such, he worked in Strasbourg on computational approaches to protein structure prediction. He joined the laboratory of Prof. Michael Levitt at Stanford University in 1997 as a visiting research associate to work on theoretical approaches to protein design.

Patrice Koehl is a faculty candidate.