Press/News

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