Brian Dominy

Biography

Dr. Dominy earned his B.S. degree in 1995 from Carnegie Mellon University in biological sciences / computer science track with a minor in chemistry, graduating with departmental, college and university honors. He then joined the Scripps Research Institute as a Ralph M. Parsons Foundation predoctoral fellow, earning his Ph.D. in 2001 under the direction of Dr. Charles L. Brooks III. His research involved the development and application of continuum electrostatic models with an emphasis toward understanding the thermodynamic properties of extremophilic proteins. From 2002 to 2005 he worked as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with Dr. Eugene Shakhnovich in the department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. During this time, his research dealt with improving statistical mechanical models, primarily inverse Boltzmann knowledge-based potentials, designed for rapid binding free energy prediction and automated drug design. He joined the faculty of Clemson University in the fall of 2005. In 2010, Dr. Dominy received a National Science Foundation CAREER award to continue his educational and research efforts toward understanding the physical and chemical principles underlying biomolecular evolution.

Research Interest

Dr. Dominy's research involves the development and application of molecular mechanics and bioinformatics techniques to explore the physical chemical basis of biological phenomena at the molecular level. Specifically, the group focuses on applications relevant to medicine, including drug design and biomolecular evolution of drug targets (i.e. drug resistance).