Members

I first joined the RadLab the spring of my junior year, and had no experience with computational chemistry techniques. Through learning from and with other RadLab members, and from Professor Radhakrishnan herself, I gained not only valuable coding and physical chemistry knowledge, but the confidence to call myself a computational (bio)chemist. This year, I am performing an honors thesis about how arginine mutations within buforin II affect its affinity for electrostatic binding to the bacterial membrane. No matter where my career trajectory is headed, I know that I'll be able to use the valuable skills this lab instills in all of its members, such as an inquisitive nature, hard work and determination, and appreciation for all things poetic and molecular!

-Ella Rothera '23

Since joining in the fall semester of my sophomore year, I have learned various computational chemistry methods, from convergence plot calculations to charge optimization. I am currently investigating electrostatic interactions in the barnase-barstar complex, a continuation of Lisa’s project which aims to examine how crowding affects binding. I am so grateful to have been introduced to the capabilities and creativity of in-silico research in this lab, and am excited to continue computational research as I pursue a Ph.D.

-Ally Wang '23

After taking a class on computational chemistry, I newfound a interest and fascination in this field and wanted to further immerse myself with computational studies, thus joining the Radhakrishnan lab in my junior year. As I just recently found much joy in coding, I wished to apply my programming skills and see how computational studies can intertwine with my original interest, chemistry. This year, I am planning to be a thesis student that will follow the computational workflow designed by Qi. et al using desHDAP1 to look at its electrostatic binding affinity to DNA and in turn, better understand AMPs. I hope to hone my ability to optimize workflow, design drug systems, improve my public speaking, and develop other skills that I can take with me once I graduate from Wellesley.

-Vin Chang '24

I joined the Radhakrishnan lab during my sophomore year with no coding and computation background. Since then, I have been investigating the electrostatic interaction between the Chronic Myeloid Leukemia drug (Ponatinib) and its target protein (Abl kinase) and writing Python scripts in the Linux operating system to order and execute jobs. I have also been analyzing the interactions of the complex using a molecular modeling and visualization computer program, called Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD). Working in this lab has helped me develop valuable critical thinking, problem-solving, and programming skills. I have also gained a deep appreciation for the ways chemistry, biology, math, and physics elegantly describe the complexities of many biological systems. In the upcoming years, I plan to continue my research in Radlab and hone my computational and scientific skills!

-Mahilet Tefera '25

My name is Shirley and I'm a biochemistry major. I joined the RadLab in my first-year spring after taking a class with Mala where I was amazed by the engineering ingenuity as she described the design of Ponatinib and Abl Kinase. I have been in the lab since then, learning about coding in Python, and performing MD simulations and charge optimizations. It was a wonderful journey, with steep learning curves every step of the way, but I always found myself coming out of a hard problem with more resiliency and better problem-solving skills. I'm currently working on improving the binding interaction between Buforin II and DNA, modeling them in a crowded cellular environment. My experience in the lab has inspired me to pursue a PhD after graduation, and I would not become the person I am now without mentorship from Mala! 

- Shirley Ji '25

My name is Jasmine, I joined the Rad Lab as a SERP member. I got interested in Professor Radhakrishnan’s research and computational chemistry because I did a summer doing proteomics data analysis research. From that experience I wanted to gain more experience and insight into the intersection between computer science and biochemistry. The Rad lab has helped me strength my knowledge in chemistry as well as Linux. I hope to continue to develop more skills and knowledge in computational biochemistry as well as modeling interactions!  

-Jasmine Le '25

My name is Sophia, and I am a biochemistry major. I joined the Radhakrishnan Lab at the beginning of my sophomore year as I wanted to engage in computational chemistry. My interest in computational chemistry started in BISC/CHEM 116, thanks to Professor Radhakrishnan. I really enjoyed learning to navigate Pymol to visualize molecules and their interactions. In the RadLab, I have learned to code through activities such as creating a convergence plot that showed the electrostatic binding free energy (ΔG) between Abl kinase and ponatinib as the grids per angstrom increased. Most recently, I have furthered my coding skills by automating this process of obtaining electrostatic binding free energy. I have greatly enjoyed my time so far in the RadLab, as all the members are collaborative, supportive, and as excited about the research as I am! As for future projects, I look forward to learning about the electrostatic interactions between antimicrobial peptides and cell membranes and finding ways to improve these interactions using computational methods.

- Sophia Qin ’25

I was one of Mala's first two honors thesis students, from 2007-2009. It was a great opportunity to work with her, and in my time in the RadLab I cultivated my passion for tinkering and was able to freely explore computational science in a way that deeply influenced the direction of my career. I still use things that I learned during my time in the RadLab on a regular basis -- my understanding of optimization methods, my knowledge of molecular modeling, regular expressions and more!

I am now a Senior Manager of Product Management at CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society. I lead a team of Product Managers who build our strategy and roadmaps and guide our product development for many challenges at the intersection of science and technology.  From building behind-the-scenes APIs to integrate chemical information into workflows, to engineering search algorithms that make scientific information discovery more intuitive, and more, our team endeavors to uncover the challenges facing scientists, and provide solutions that meet their needs.

-Andrea (Johnston) Jacobs '09 

As an alum of Mala's Lab at Wellesley, and as an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Northeastern University, I look back at my time in the Radhakrishnan lab as one that shaped the majority of who I am as a scientist. I started in Mala's lab as a sophomore not quite knowing what computational chemistry entailed. She took me under her wing, taught me how to problem solve, and most importantly, how to learn. I am a blind computational chemist, and I was a never given the sense that I could not achieve and thrive in Mala's lab. Even being one her first thesis students, she never gave up me. I was able to publish two papers from my time in the lab, and I was always held to the highest standards. The two projects I worked on were an analysis of the Electrostatic Determinants of Binding Between Non-nucleoside HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase (RT) Inhibitors and Variants of HIV-1 RT as well as an analysis of fast boundary-integral approximations for modeling electrostatic contributions of molecular binding. I would not be the scientist I am today if it were not for my time in the RadLab. 

Currently, I run the COMBINE (COmputational Modeling for BioInterface Engineering) Lab in the department of Bioengineering at Northeastern University, where we study the pulmonary surfactant within human lungs using computational methods. 

- Mona Minkara, PhD '09 

I have learned so much in Mala's lab, from chemistry to computers, so it is impossible to enumerate everything. Most importantly, I got to be with a group of impressive people (including Mala, of course!), learned how to not make boring presentations (we presented at Ruhlman Conference the theory of finding an optimal significant other as an analogy for molecular matchmaking), and had lots of fun! Ten years after being a member of Mala's lab, the fond memories lead me to physical chemistry and computational chemistry research in a liberal arts college.

I have spent 3.5 years as an assistant professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and I am now about to start as an assistant chemistry professor at Harvey Mudd College. I will be thinking about how to make physical chemistry fun with the help of computers. For research, I think about how liquid molecules hold their hands (or be enemies) and dance around.

-Bilin Zhuang '10

I joined the RadLab in the summer before my junior year at Wellesley. I was working on a project that involved clustering strains of HIV by their susceptibility to a set of protease inhibitor drugs in order to help make prescribed drug combinations more effective for HIV-positive patients. I learned the basics of programming in Perl, how to thoroughly debug programs, and how to communicate the logic behind and practical implications of my work.

These have all served me well throughout my research on honey bee behavior. I got my masters at the University of Illinois, and my Ph.D.  in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. I studied honey bee foraging preferences to help improve bee-friendly flower plantings (and yes, those are thousands of worker bees sitting on my face- the queen is in a cage tied to my chin).   After completing my postdoc at Harvey-Mudd College, I will be starting as an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Saint Mary's College in Indiana. I'm excited to teach and continue studying honey bee behavior with undergraduate students there.

- Morgan Carr-Markell '10

I joined Professor Radhakrishnan's computational chemistry lab during my sophomore summer and continued my work there until graduation. During these two years, I learned to code in both Perl and Matlab and used these skills to analyze genotypic and phenotypic data from the Stanford HIV database. We identified patterns of cross-resistance across the nine commercially available HIV protease inhibitors to inform future drug design and treatment cocktails and published our findings in BMC Bioinformatics in 2011. My time in Professor Radhakrishnan's lab introduced me to academic research in the fields of computational modeling and medicine, and encouraged me to continue to pursue these interests post-graduation.

After having completed Medical School and Residency at Vanderbilt University, I am currently completing a dual fellowship in Pediatric Hospital Medicine and Health Services Research at Boston Children's Hospital. I'm also taking classes at Harvard to get my MPH degree. I hope to make research a focus of my clinical career and am specifically interested in using big data to inform high-value clinical care in pediatrics.

- Katie Doherty '11

I joined the Radhakrishnan Lab the summer after my first year and continued on until graduation. My first project involved using cluster analysis to find patterns in HIV-1 drug resistance data. Then, as a senior, I did an independent study in which I researched the effect of "crowders", or miscellaneous macromolecules, on the electrostatics of protein-protein binding inside the cell. While in the RadLab, I learned how to code in Perl, MATLAB, and Excel VBA, among other languages, and I was introduced to computational research, the publication process and giving scientific presentations. These experiences led me to pursue a PhD in Computational Biology at Brown University. My time in the RadLab has not only given me invaluable skills that I use every day in graduate school, but also some of my favorite Wellesley memories!

- Priyanka Nakka '12

I joined the Radhakrishnan lab the winter of my first year at Wellesley. Over the three and a half years that I worked in the Radhakrishnan lab, I researched the electrostatic contributions of protein atoms during binding. Since graduation, I've been a consultant, high school chemistry teacher, grad student in computer science and public policy, data scientist, and (currently) machine learning engineer -- where I continue to use the computational thinking skills that I learned in the RadLab. 

- Emma Nechamkin '12

As a sophomore, I joined a project in the Radhakrishnan lab evaluating multiple approximate methods of calculating electrostatic free energies of binding. Later I wrote a senior thesis on a way to estimate these free energies by using regression to weight structure-based features of proteins. In addition to learning how to code in Matlab, Perl and R, I learned how to visualize proteins in VMD, understand journal articles about both computational and wet lab research, and generally develop a sense of chemical intuition. What I most enjoyed from my work in the lab was the intellectual challenge of writing code to solve a problem. I gained computational skills that I never could have picked up in a classroom, as well as a totally different insight into how molecules recognize each other and bind.

-Amy Kreienkamp '13

When I joined the Radhakrishnan lab during sophomore year, I did not have any prior experience in computational science. Although clueless at first, I quickly learned how to code in Perl, C++, and MATLAB and how to visualize proteins in VMD with help from Professor Radhakrishnan and other members of the lab. I soon took on a project that studied the physico-chemical differences between promiscuous proteins and specific proteins, the results of which can have important implications for drug design. As part of this project since the beginning, and it was an amazing experience to help develop and execute it. Through my experience in Radhakrishnan lab, I gained computational skills which proved to be useful since many fields incorporate computation as part of their research methods. In addition, I developed critical thinking and problem solving skills that are transferable no matter what I do.

I graduated from Stony Brook medical school and doing a pediatrics residency at Tufts Floating Hospital for Children.

Ying Yi Zhang '13

I learned everything I know about the research world through working in the Radhakrishnan lab for three years at Wellesley. I gained extremely valuable, applicable skills in coding and computational research in this lab, learning not only Matlab, Perl, C++, and R, but also ways to integrate these different modalities. I was able to take ownership of a project and test my own boundaries, which prepared me in ways classes cannot for medical school. My project also allowed me to integrate computational chemistry with my ultimate goal of becoming a doctor - my major project and eventual thesis focused on molecularly "match-making" chronic myeloid leukemia drugs to their target protein, BCR-Abl, and analyze why or how certain drugs worked for certain mutations, while others did not. It was a fascinating perspective on healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry, while also being focused on patient care.

I am now a medical student at Yale School of Medicine and heavily involved with clinical research.

- Lucy Y. Liu '13

Although the cell is full of macromolecules, most models of protein binding involve the proteins alone in a sea of water and salt. We are interested in the effect that these macromolecular crowders have on the electrostatics of protein interaction. I have been involved in the crowding project from its conception, and watching it grow over the years has been an amazing experience. I joined the lab as a first year and worked on other projects briefly, but from sophomore spring until graduation, I focused on this project. The Radhakrishnan lab has allowed me to explore multiple aspects of computational chemistry, from electrostatics to molecular dynamics, in addition to giving me the opportunity to learn more about our computer cluster itself.

I just graduated with a PhD in chemistry from MIT, and will be starting my first full time position as a scientist soon!

-Helena Qi '14

As a part of the Rad Lab, I learned the power of computation for modeling chemical systems. Through my projects in the lab, I strengthened both my programming and problem-solving skills. In addition, my work helped me develop my goals for life after Wellesley and led me to graduate studies in computational chemistry. I earned my PhD in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, studying computational protein design and modeling for peptide-based materials. I am currently teaching chemistry and science research at the high school level. 

-Jacquelyn Blum '14

In the Radhakrishnan lab, I was studying how the binding of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia drugs to their biological target, the BCR-ABL oncoprotein, can be improved using charge optimization. I joined the lab as a chemistry major with no background in computation, but I was particularly interested in drug design and medical applications. With lots of help from Professor Radhakrishnan and other members of the group, I was able to join the ongoing Chronic Myeloid Leukemia project. I find computational chemistry to be a wonderful field! With the right amount of training and good internet connection, I could be anywhere in the world doing science from my laptop. This is a whole new perspective on research.

Currently, I am a medical student also pursuing a PhD degree in the field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

-Daniele Evangelista Leite da Silva '14

I joined the Radhakrishnan lab during my first year at Wellesley. I came into this lab with no computational background and had only taken one chemistry course. Although it was challenging at first, I quickly learned how to write code, problem solve and propose ideas for ongoing projects. Soon after, I took on my own project that focuses on how well drugs find their destined targets amidst a sea of macromolecules in a cellular environment. Working in this lab has trained me to become a critical thinker. Not only have I gained valuable computational skills that I would have never been exposed to otherwise, I have also learned how to problem solve and have in the process developed a sense of chemical and physical intuition.

-Connie Chen '15

I joined the Rad Lab spring semester of my sophomore year with minimal coding experience, and once I became more comfortable with scripting, I started to work on the continuing project in our lab that looks at the effects of macromolecular crowding on electrostatic binding between Ponatinib and its biological target. Working in the lab helped me to truly appreciate the merits of computational science and modeling systems.

After going to Medical School at Howard University College of Medicine, I'm currently in residency for Internal Medicine.

-Nusrat Jahan '16

My name is Yuanyuan (Laura) Luo. As part of the Rad lab, my research concentrated on understanding and building upon a former lab member, Jacquelyn Blum's senior thesis on the Feature-based Calculation of the Electrostatic Component of the Free Energy of Protein-Protein Binding. The goal of the project is to use a combined approach of both different physical features of a protein complex and data solved using the typical Poisson equation to predict the electrostatic binding free energy. I joined the lab with no background in either coding or computational Chemistry. Although there was a huge learning curve in the beginning, I really enjoyed doing what I am doing since it helped strengthening my problem-solving skills.

I am a first-year at Harvard School of Dental Medicine pursuing my DMD degree right now.

-Laura Luo '17

I newly joined Professor Radhakrishnan in the Spring of my sophomore year. I'm currently learning Perl (slowly but surely!) and having knowledge on electrostatic forces and binding energies enter through osmosis of other lab members' presentations and projects. I've learned about wet-lab protein work before at Professor Yong Yu's lab at St. John's University and I'm excited to learn the computational side of things!

As of 2019, I've been working as a pharmacy technician and preparing to apply to nursing school.

-Shi Hui Ng (Fiona) '18

Because biomolecular interactions occur in aqueous environments, analyzing the charges on protein residues becomes necessary to optimize the efficacy of protein-ligand binding. Determining this energetically favorable “sweet spot” is best accomplished by computational means because of the sheer quantity of atoms and charges that must be considered. As member of the Radhakrishnan lab at Wellesley College, I have been specifically focusing on optimizing the charges on the leukemia-treating drug, Ponatinib, since my sophomore year. Participating in the RadLab has exposed me to the fascinating interdisciplinary nature of this research, and witnessing electrostatics and molecular dynamics intersect with computational and mathematical tools has been an eye-opening experience.

-Sharon Kim '18

I joined the Radhakrishnan lab during my sophomore year as part of a collaboration project with the Elmore lab. As part of my research project I used molecular dynamics simulations and continuum electrostatics calculations to understand the effects of macromolecular crowders on binding of an antimicrobial peptide to DNA. Through this project and my time in the Radhakrishnan lab I grew to love molecular modeling. 

I am currently a PhD student in the Biophysics Program at Stanford University where I use molecular modeling tools to design proteins.

-Carla Perez '18

I worked in the Rad Lab during my junior and senior years of high school ('16-'17) and at the time I had no idea how much it would impact my career trajectory. I went on to do comp chem/bio research at Boston College under Professors Jean-Baptiste Tristan, Lucas Bao, and Babak Momeni -- mostly in machine-learned free energy calculations -- and then to work as a software engineer/computational chemist at a Cambridge-local startup called Kebotix. I had a brief stint at Harvard's SysBio PhD program working with Professor Debbie Marks before breaking off and joining a distributed database company, Ocient, where I'm now an engineering team lead. Looking back, I had wanted to be an organic chemist (with no interest in CS). Because of a mix of some red tape and Mala's willingness to take me in, I've had an amazing 5-6 year track in computational chemistry and am looking forward to a career in engineering.

-Darius Russell Kish

I joined the Rad Lab at the start of my sophomore year as part of the Sophomore Early Research Program (SERP), and stayed through my Chemical Physics Honors Thesis. Specifically, I studied how cellular crowding effects the electrostatic interactions within the barnase-barstar bacterial protein complex, with particular attention paid to specific residues of interest on the interface. Working in such an interdisciplinary environment was an incredibly valuable experience as I navigated and pieced together my many interests. Prior to joining the lab, I had no computing in my background, but really liked the idea of being able to work in the space of equations while doing chemistry. Through my time spent in the Radhakrishnan Lab, I learned that I really enjoy coding, theory, and being able to apply my physics and math interests to chemistry problems.

As of 2023, I am a 4th year PhD candidate at Boston University, studying electron transfer processes in the Computational and Theoretical Chemistry division.

-Alyssa Kranc '19

I was a part of the Radhakrishnan lab since my first year, and I worked on a project involving the use of theoretical model systems to study how various physical properties of molecular binding partners could modulate the effects of macromolecular crowding on their binding energetics. I first joined this lab because I was interested in the interdisciplinary nature of this lab, particularly how chemistry research could be done solely through computation. The experiences I have had have been incredibly rewarding and valuable.

I am currently working as a postbac IRTA research fellow at the NIH and am hoping to run a marathon soon!

-Rachel Kim '19

I completed my thesis research project on how molecular dynamics affects electrostatic interactions between CML drugs and their biological target, Bcr-Abl kinase in the lab. After graduating in 2020 with a Biochemistry major, I worked as a research assistant at Boston Children's Hospital for a year. I then headed to Baltimore for medical school, and am currently a 2nd-year medical student at Johns Hopkins SOM.

-Chi Trinh '20

I joined the Radhakrishnan lab in my junior year at Wellesley. The project I worked on aimed to improve the binding affinity of an antimicrobial peptide (buforin II) to DNA in a crowded cellular environment using computational and experimental tools. After graduating from Wellesley, I started my Ph.D. at Yale in 2020. Currently, I work in the Dimitrova Lab where I study how long non-coding RNAs control key cellular processes in cancer through epigenetic reprogramming. Although I am not in a computational lab, the programming skills I learned from the Radhakrishnan lab have been transferred into my current research, such as conducting sequencing analysis. I will pursue a post-doctoral research position after the completion of my doctoral degree at Yale and my ultimate goal is to become a principal investigator at an R01 research institution. 

-Qiao Li '20

I joined the Rad Lab the summer after my first year. The project I worked on involved studying the electrostatic interactions between Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) drugs and their target, the Bcr-Abl kinase. What sparked my interest in deciding to join this lab was the fact that it is highly interdisciplinary; this type of research uses chemistry, biology, biochemistry, computer science, physics, and calculus on a day-to-day basis. Whether it be writing a code in Python to zero the atom charges on the drug, recognizing and analyzing the functions of amino acids on ponatinib using a visual molecular software, or finding the minimum electrostatic free energy of binding value using first derivative calculations, I have truly been given the opportunity to be exposed to almost every possible area of STEM!

I'm currently an associate computational biologist at the Broad Institute and am in the process of applying to PhD programs in computational biology.

-Nina Sachdev '21

My name is Rachel. I'm a prospective computer science major. Since joining the Rad Lab the summer after my first year, I have been working on a project that studies molecular recognition using the Buforin II-complex system. By studying this system of interest, we hope to better understand how to use Buforin II, a peptide, to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. What I found interesting about joining a computational chemistry lab is how interdisciplinary the topics are and how it inspires me to use and build technology to solve current health care issues. As a student continuing down the path of computer science, I hope to help integrate Python, implement useful data structures and learn more about applying objected-oriented programming to make our jobs more efficient.

-Rachel Navarette '21

I took an intro class with Professor Mala and it was so much fun. I really enjoyed how she presented the course materials and approached every homework problem during office hours. When I decided to be a chemistry major, I approached her and had the opportunity to attend a RadLab group meeting. I learned about several projects the lab members were working on. I spoke to Professor Mala about applying for the Sophomore Early Research Program (SERP) and she agreed to mentor me. I really enjoyed working in RadLab because everyone was easy to approach and ready to help.

-Oluwakemi Badusi '21

I joined the Rad Lab in the summer before my junior year as part of the Science Center Summer Research Program. Before entering, I was clueless when it came to coding. Matlab and Python were unfamiliar to me. I knew of them but did not know how to use them. I was interested in this lab because it was extremely interdisciplinary, combining subjects like physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science. Currently, I am working on a project that explores the impact of crowding and conformational dynamics in the interaction between barnase and barstar.

-Lisa Huang '21

Being a member of the Radhakrishnan Lab has been an amazing experience. I joined the RadLab in the summer before my junior year. I am working on using GROMACS and charge optimization to study the interaction between drugs used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (particularly imatinib) and BCR-ABL kinase, which they are designed to deactivate. My current goal is to make an MD simulation of imatinib and then run a series of charge optimizations on different snapshots from the simulation to see how the optimal charges for binding changes when the complex is in a different position. Though I've been helped in my efforts by a prior knowledge of python, I've had to learn a lot of new things about chemistry and computers in order to make these calculations. I love working in the RadLab!

- Anik Brinckerhoff '21

I joined RadLab at the beginning of my junior year in the fall of 2020. Being a part of the lab was not only an opportunity to learn, but also gave me a sense of community that eased the feeling of  isolation brought about by the pandemic lockdowns and studying remotely. My first year in the lab was a process of exploration. While learning about the theory behind MD simulations and charge optimization, I also explored free energy perturbation (FEP). Though I ultimately did not take on a project involving FEP, I gained a better understanding of statistical mechanics that was helpful for my thesis. For my thesis project, I focused on improving the electrostatic interaction between the antimicrobial peptide Buforin-II and the bacterial membrane. Because of the mentorship of Mala and my committee, my scientific presentation skills improved a lot over the course of the project. I was proud to have represented both RadLab and Elmore Lab at the ACS Spring 2022 conference to deliver a presentation on the labs' joint efforts in antimicrobial peptide design. After graduation, I taught math and science to middle and high school students for a semester. However, I soon found myself missing the research environment. I will be joining the Gray Lab at Johns Hopkins as a Rosetta Commons post-bac scholar to work on antibody structure prediction using machine learning. 

-Amy Liu '22

Being a member of the RadLab was a highlight of my Wellesley College experience. I joined at the beginning of my junior year. Over the course of my first project, I learned how to perform charge optimization calculations with linear algebra and create convergence plots in Python to measure Ponatinib’s drug-target electrostatic interactions (Ponatinib is an oral drug used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia and Philadelphia chromosome–positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia). During my senior year, I continued this work and alongside Dr. Mala Radhakrishnan and Dr. Sam Illingworth pioneered a meta-analytic using poetry to study the student research experience at Wellesley College. I truly enjoyed the interdisciplinary nature of these projects; being able to visualize and understand how seemingly separate fields of study (mathematics, organic chemistry, biology, physics, english, etc.) come together to explain environments inside and outside of the human body has been invaluable. 

-Devyani Arora '22

I joined RadLab during the Spring of my sophomore year at Wellesley. As a neuroscience major, RadLab was my first introduction to computational modeling and biochemistry. On the team, I worked on charge optimization calculations between Potatinib and its kinase receptor. RadLab was such a wonderful way to learn more about computational techniques and has greatly informed my research interests since. After my time in RadLab, I joined the Langer lab at MIT and was able to apply the Python and Matlab programming experience I received from Radlab to research on Alzheimer's disease. As a graduating senior, I plan to pursue a career in research and hope to eventually earn a Ph.D. in Neuroengineering or computational Neuroscience!

-Emily Forden '23

I joined the Radhakrishnan Lab at the start of my sophomore year after the COVID-19 pandemic forced me to leave the in-person wet lab that I had worked in previously. I still really wanted to continue doing research, but with the shut down of in-person labs, I decided to try my hand at computational research. Although at that point I hadn't taken any classes in coding and had no computational background, I was able to teach myself Python with the help of Professor Radhakrishnan and my peers in the RadLab, which allowed me to successfully design a script to investigate the electrostatic interaction between Ponatinib and its target protein BCR-Abl kinase. I also learned how to use the Linux operating system, and Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) as a means of gaining deeper insights into protein structure. This research work gave me a newfound enthusiasm for the creativity and problem-solving involved in computational work, and for using computational methods in drug design. The concepts that I learned in this class deepened my insights into biophysical chemistry, programming, and pharmaceutical development, and allowed me to build my skills in problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication. The experiences I gained at the RadLab have definitely allowed me to approach other aspects of my path as Biochemistry major, be they coursework, internships, or lab work, with greater confidence and capability.

-Nivedita Nambrath '23