Awarded in 2024
Home Department: Computer Science
Faculty Advisors: James Zou (Biomedical Data Science) and Joseph Wu (Medicine – Cardiovascular Medicine), Radiology)

Research Title: Generative AI to Design, Synthesize, and Validate Drug Candidates

Drug discovery is an extremely slow and expensive endeavor. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) promises to accelerate drug discovery by rapidly designing drug candidates. However, the molecules designed by existing generative AI algorithms are rarely tested experimentally due to poor synthetic accessibility. Kyle proposes to take SyntheMol, a generative AI method the Zou lab developed for creating easily synthesizable compounds, and dramatically improve its AI algorithm to create SyntheMol 2.0. He will then apply SyntheMol 2.0 to design drug candidates for a cardiovascular disease to carefully validate the ability of generative AI to design safe and effective drug candidates.