Sarah Alamdari

Microsoft Research New England
Data Scientist
Biomedical Machine Learning Group

Live broadcast available:
ZOOM Link
PW: UBCBE1

Discovery of Biomolecular Structure-Function Mechanisms with Computational Frameworks at the Nanoscale

Biomolecular function is closely linked to the events that occur at the molecular level, which often takes place in a complex biological environment (e.g., at a complex interface). Approaches which can correlate the massive design space of biophysical and biochemical features at the nanoscale with their expressed macromolecular behavior are of fundamental interest to the field of bioinspired design. While experimental/AI approaches have successfully been applied to characterize the behavior of solution-phase proteins, there is a lack of methods which can probe interfacial phenomena of biomolecules at the same level of resolution. Increases in compute power point to simulation approaches as one avenue for advancing the frontier of biomolecular structure/function exploration at interfaces. In this talk, I will present how we use and apply physics-based simulation frameworks to model interfacial peptide, protein, and peptoid systems. As a result, this work demonstrates the capability of computational molecular models to study different biological phenomena with high accuracy, providing insight to the behavior of these complex biomolecules within the areas of biomineralization, self-assembly, and enzyme catalysis.

ZOOM Link
PW: UBCBE1

Bio

Sarah Alamdari is a Data Scientist for the Biomedical Machine Learning Group at Microsoft Research New England. Her research interests lie broadly at the intersection of biology, machine learning, and molecular level design. Sarah earned her PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and an NSF Data Science National Research Trainee. On the basis of her graduate research, she holds many awards including been named an MIT Rising Star, and a Husky 100. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering magna cum laude from Arizona State University. She is passionate about increasing diversity in the computational molecular research space through mentorship and outreach, and she is a co-organizer of the COMSEF Scholars REU program.
Website: sarahalamdari.com | Twitter: @sarahalamdari