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SUMMARY:Inaugural Lecture : The (he)art of molecular sculpture to shape pr
 otein structure and function
DTSTART:20220519T171500
DTEND:20220519T181500
DTSTAMP:20260916T212924Z
UID:46ded925771904feaf7f1c0ad8b5f8e24cd983a3b8b8974830cae5c4
CATEGORIES:Inaugural lectures - Honorary Lecture
DESCRIPTION:Professor Bruno Correia\, Institute of Bioengineering (IBI) \,
  School of Engineering (STI)\nAbstract :\nProteins are involved in virtual
 ly every biological process within cells. Predicting interactions between
  proteins and other biomolecules solely based on structure remains a centr
 al challenge in biology. A high-level representation of protein structure\
 , the molecular surface\, displays patterns of chemical and geometric feat
 ures that fingerprint a protein’s modes of interactions with other biomo
 lecules. These structural fingerprints are difficult to grasp by visual an
 alysis but can be learned from large-scale datasets.\nI will discuss sev
 eral methodologies developed in our group to capture geometrical and chemi
 cal features of protein molecules\, which can be used to decode their biol
 ogical roles and engineer novel functionalities non-existent in nature. \
 nFinally\, I will describe our approach based on geometrical and chemical
  descriptors to design de novo protein-protein interactions\, which may
  have important applications in the development of new protein-based drugs
 . Also\, how this approach can be used to create vaccine immunogens and c
 omponents to control cellular activities.\nWe anticipate that our novel
  frameworks for molecular representations will lead to improvements in o
 ur understanding of protein function and design.\nBio:\nBruno Correia  ha
 s trained in world-renowned laboratories and institutions in the United St
 ates of America (University of Washington and The Scripps Research Institu
 te). Very early in his scientific career he found out his fascination abou
 t protein structure and function. His PhD studies evolved in the direction
  of immunogen design and vaccine engineering which sparked his interest in
  the many needs and opportunities in vaccinology and translational researc
 h. His efforts resulted in an enlightening piece of work where for the fir
 st time\, computationally designed immunogens elicited potent neutralizing
  antibodies. During my postdoctoral studies he developed novel chemoproteo
 mics methods for the identification of protein-small molecule interaction 
 sites in complex proteomes. In March 2015\, he joined the École Polytechn
 ique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) – Switzerland as a tenure track assis
 tant professor. The focus of his research group is to develop computationa
 l tools for protein design with particular emphasis in applying these stra
 tegies to immunoengineering (e.g. vaccine and cancer immunotherapy). He h
 as been awarded several prestigious prizes and grants including the Protei
 n Society Young investigator prize and the European Research Council Start
 ing Grant. He has also been awarded a teaching prize in Life Sciences in 2
 019.  \nRegistration : https://forms.gle/JHEtzdbvKp9aMDn8A
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717 https://epfl.zoom.u
 s/j/63358650865
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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