About

My name is Steven Albanese. Currently, I am in my 4th year as a a PhD student at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and work in John Chodera’s Lab

Interests

My research interests are focused on using computational chemistry and automated biophysical experiments to design better cancer therapeutics. Specifically, I’m interested in how clinically observed mutations alter protein structure and understanding how these alterations inform patient response to existing therapies or can be leveraged to design more selective inhibitors. To do so, I use alchemical free energy calculations and automated biophysical experiments to predict small molecule kinase inhibitor affinities. I use massively parallel molecular dynamics simulations on Folding@home to understand kinase conformational dynamics and the structural impact of clinical kinase mutations. To test our predictions, I work on expressing and purifying human kinase domains in E. coli to use in fluorescence based affinity and thermostability assays.

Academic Background

Ph.D, Biomedical Sciences: Cancer Biology, Gerstner Sloan Kettering (2014-present) Committtee: John D. Chodera, Sarat Chandarlapaty, Daniel A. Heller, Robert Abel

B.A, Biological Sciences and Chemistry, Cornell University (2010-2014)

Read more about my background and publications in my CV!