Vaidehi Lab Members

VLabgroup

Valdehi

Nagarajan Vaidehi, Ph.D.

nvaidehi@coh.org

Professor and Chair, Department of Computational and Quantitative Medicine

Research interests: developing physics-based computational methods to study protein structure, dynamics and drug design

Staff Scientists

Sangbae Lee, Ph.D., Staff Scientist, Vaidehi Lab Member

Sangbae Lee, Ph.D.

salee@coh.org; sblee11@gmail.com B.A., Chemistry, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea M.S., Physical Chemistry, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea Ph.D., Physical Chemistry, University of Florida Research interests: development of biased ligand on angiotensin II type 1 (AT1R) GPCRs, design of novel milder detergent for thermostabilized GPCRs

Postdoctoral Fellows

Soumadwip Ghosh, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Vaidehi Lab Member

Soumadwip Ghosh, Ph.D.

sghosh@coh.org; soumadwipghosh@gmail.com B.Sc., Chemistry, St. Xavier's College (autonomous) Kolkata, West Bengal, India M.Sc., Applied Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India Ph.D., Physical Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Maharashtra, India Research interests: identifying thermostable point mutations for GPCRs using energy scores and evolutionary constraints, aggregation propensity of chemokine receptors using classical MD simulations

Suvamay Jana, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Vaidehi Lab Member

Suvamay Jana, Ph.D.

sjana@coh.orgB.E., Chemical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India M.Tech., Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, India Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Kentucky, KY, USA. Research intereststo develop and modify computational chemistry tools that can rapidly predict thermostabilizing mutations for membrane receptors, which is a critical step for receptor crystallization; understanding the stability of membrane receptors in various detergent micelles, important for protein extraction and purification

Ning Ma, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Vaidehi Lab Member

nma@coh.orgB.S., Biology, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China M.S., Microbiology, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China Ph.D., Computational Chemistry, University of South Florida, Florida Research interests: kinase dynamics simulation, GPCR-membrane simulation, conformational free energy simulation, method development.

Anita Nivedha, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Vaidehi Lab Member

Anita Nivedha, Ph.D.

anivedha@coh.org; anitaknivedha@gmail.comB.Tech., Bioinformatics, Vellore Institute of Technology University, Tamil Nadu, India Ph.D., Computational Chemistry, University of Georgia Research interests: biased agonism using classical MD simulations, biased ligand design, studying the effects of allosteric communication in GPCRs using MD and AlloSteer, understanding the molecular basis for subtype selectivity and method development.

Graduate Students

Shayla Paulekas, Graduate Student, Vaidehi Lab Member

Shayla Paulekas

spaulekas@coh.org B.A., Biology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California M.S., Biochemistry, California State University Northridge, Northridge, California Ph.D. (in progress) – Biology, Irell & Manella Graduate School of Biological Sciences, City of Hope, Duarte, California Research interests: studying the molecular mechanisms of partial agonism and allostery in G protein coupled receptors, and how each process influences G protein selectivity

Manbir Sandhu, Graduate Student, Vaidehi Lab Member

msandhu@coh.orgB.S., Human Biology, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California Ph.D. currently obtaining, Computational Biophysics, Irell & Manella Graduate School of Biological Sciences, City of Hope, Duarte, California Research interests: delineating the structural features of the GPCR-G protein complex that lead to selective signaling to different G protein pathways

Research Associate

Sanychen Muk, Research Associate, Vaidehi Lab Member

smuk@coh.org B.Sc., Bioengineering, University of California Riverside, Riverside, California Research interests: applying machine learning in the study of GPCR thermostability

Visiting Scholar

Philippus Hendrikx, Visiting Scholar, Vaidehi Lab Member

Philippus Hendrikx

phendrikx@coh.org; philip.1993@live.nl B.Sc., Biomedical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Eindhoven, Netherlands M.Sc., Biomedical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Eindhoven, Netherlands Research interests: investigating GPCR c-term binding to G-protein through molecular dynamics simulations