Press/News

Cheng-Yu Chen et.al. received he best poster award at the Fall 2012 Biochemistry Department retreat for their poster titled "NMR Structure Determination of GrsA Epimerase Domain by Residual Dipolar Couplings (RDCs), Sparse NOEs and PREs," and co-authored by Cheng-Yu Chen, Chittaranjan Tripathy, Jianyang Zeng, Pei Zhou and Bruce R. Donald.
Bruce Donld is giving a talk, "Protein Interface Design, Cystic Fibrosis and HIV," in the Duke CBB Computational Biology Seminar on September 17, 2012.
Computer Algorithms Aid Search for Cystic Fibrosis Drugs, NIH NIGMS Biomedical Beat (Research Digest) May 17 Issue (2012).
Computer Design Leads To Cystic Fibrosis Drug Candidates (Chemical & Engineering News, 2012).
Bruce Donald was named James B. Duke Professor (May, 2012: Duke Announces Distinguished Professors and July, 2012: Duke Computer Science news article).
Computer-designed Molecules Point to New Therapy for Cystic Fibrosis, Duke News (2012).
Our paper is the Cover Article for PROTEINS, February 2012 issue. Please see:
Protein Loop Closure Using Orientational Restraints from NMR Data. C.Tripathy, J.Zeng, P.Zhou, and B.R.Donald.* Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics 2012; 80(2):433-453. and The Journal issue.
This work describes an advance in methodology for the structure determination of protein loops by NMR, using residual dipolar couplings.
D-Lab Ph.D. student Mark Hallen was awarded a prestigious PhRMA Foundation graduate fellowship. The goal of the fellowship Program is to promote the use of informatics in an integrative approach to the understanding of biological and disease processes. Fellowship awards support career development for scientists engaged in cutting-edge research in information technology and experimental validation, thus advancing the integration of molecular and clinical approaches into problems of pharmacological concern (December, 2011).
Recent Donald Lab ("D-Lab") Alumni news:
- Karl Bohringer (D-Lab Ph.D. 1997), was named the John M. Fluke Distinguished Chair of Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle.
- Ivelin Georgiev (D-Lab Ph.D. 2009), became co-head of the Structural Bioinformatics Section (SBiS) at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC), National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), NIH.
  Ivelin was also selected to receive a 2011 NIAID Merit Award. This award recognizes the meritorious achievements and accomplishments of NIAID employees.
- Igor Paprotny (D-Lab Ph.D. 2008), became a research faculty member at The Berkeley Sensors and Actuator Center (BSAC), U. C. Berkeley.
- Chris Langmead (D-Lab Ph.D. 2004) was promoted to Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU).
What else happened lately?
Bruce Donald was featured in the Spring 2011 issue of Stanford's Profiles in Computer Science Courage. (Also available here)
In 2011, Bruce Donald was elected Fellow of the IEEE.
From 2000-2011 we have had 11 papers accepted in the RECOMB conference, which we enjoy going to. On most years that's one paper but in 2011 we had 4 papers accepted for oral presentation and the proceedings. They are listed here on our publications page.
An article on the Donald Lab's work (in collaboration with Amy Anderson's group) on predicting resistance mutations using protein design algorithms appeared in PNAS in July 2010, and was reported by DukeHealth, DukeMed, EurekAlert, the News & Observer, and SmartPlanet.
In 2009, Bruce Donald was elected Fellow of the ACM.
Congratulations to Ivelin Georgiev and Jeff Martin, recipients of awards announced at the Department of Computer Science Annual Meeting in August 2009. Ivelin was named winner of the Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award and Nomination for the ACM Dissertation Award for his thesis entitled "Novel Algorithms for Computational Protein Design with Applications to Enzyme Redesign and Small-Molecule Inhibitor Design." Jeff was presented the Outstanding Master's Thesis Award for his thesis entitled "Algorithms for Structure Determination of Symmetric Proteins from Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Data."
Protein Power, an article in SeedMagazine.com, in April 2009, recognized the Donald Lab's work in enzyme engineering.
The Donald Lab's work in using computer algorithms to redesign enzymes that make antibiotics was reported in IEEE Spectrum Online in the article Computer-Designed Drugs Could Thwart Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in February 2009.
Duke News also reported on the Donald Lab's work in enzyme design in the February 2009 article Duke Software Dramatically Speeds Enzyme Design.
Congratulations to Chittu and his wife Julie on the birth of their daughter, Chijul Bruce Tripathy, on August 4, 2008! Chijul's middle name is named after Chittu's Ph.D. advisor, Bruce Randall Donald, whose middle name is after Bruce's father's advisor, James G. Randall.
Duke team creates a fleet of crawling robots, a News & Observer article about the Donald Lab constructing a fleet of fully steerable microrobots appeared in June 2008.
Microrobotic Ballet, A Duke News article and video about the Donald Lab's microscopic robots maneuvering independently on a stage one millimeter square appeared in June 2008.
Nicholas Patrick, a junior majoring in Computer Science and a member of the Donald Lab, is one of three Duke students selected for a Goldwater Scholarship in science, mathematics and engineering for the 2008-09 academic year. More »
An article on the Donald Lab's work in computational redesign of nature's molecular assembly lines appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Duke's Department of Computer Science newsletter, Threads.
While numerous inhibitors of enzymatic activity have been developed, the development of inhibitors of protein-protein interactions has only recently come to the forefront as a viable approach. Allosteric inhibition of such protein-protein interactions presents a number of advantages, including not having to compete for binding with the partner protein. However, to date there are very few examples of such inhibitors. We have developed novel allosteric small-molecule inhibitors of the binding of RUNX1 to CBFβ, two proteins whose translocations play a critical role in the development of acute myeloid leukemia and acute lymphocytic leukemia. The results are reported in the cover article of Chemistry & Biology, (Cell Press, 2007) [More »].
Two of our papers on protein design were recommended reading "of outstanding interest" by SM Lippow & B Tidor. Progress in computational protein design. Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2007 Jul 17; Medline.
Bruce Donald gave the Inaugural Lecture, for the MIT Nanotechnology Public Lecture Series on April 19, 2007. (Announcement)
View the lecture.

Selected articles about the Donald Lab