Awarded in 2006
Home Department: Biomedical Informatics
Faculty Advisor: Jean-Claude Latombe (Computer Science)

Research Title: Sampling-based exploration of the folded state of a protein under kinematic and geometric constraints

Research Description: In the study of protein-ligand binding, the conformational selection theory suggests that a protein exists as an ensemble of rapidly interconverting folded conformations and that a ligand selects the most proper conformations to bind to. However, only a small number of conformations can be obtained experimentally, while existing simulation techniques are often too expensive to broadly sample folded conformation space. Peggy’s research focused on designing new methods to efficiently sample protein conformations. She used the linkage model together with rigidity analysis to develop a new, efficient protein conformation sampling method taking steric clash into account.

WHERE IS SHE NOW?

Peggy is an Engineering Manager of a machine learning team at Facebook.