As a scientist, I have always been interested in the ability of computational techniques to offer new insights and solutions to various problems in chemistry, biology and at the interface between them. I was also fascinated by the ability of computers to provide atomic-scale visualization (and in colors!) of molecular systems of all sizes and shapes. Over the years, I became to realize that computers can also make significant contributions, at the basic science level as well as at the translational level, to many design problems such as drug design and materials design. Thus I have pursued first industrial in several biotechnology companies and subsequently academic career in computational chemistry/biology and computer aided drug design and more recently, with the rapid development of the big data paradigm, in chemoinformatics and materials informatics.
We are a computational laboratory working on molecular modeling, computer aided drug design and chemoinformatics. Research in our lab focuses on the development and application of computational methods and workflows to design new compounds (i.e., drugs, materials) with improved properties. This design strategy is multi-disciplinary in nature and consists of various levels of theory, different computational techniques, and different machine learning algorithms. Over the years we have stablished an extensive network of collaborations with experimental research groups both at Bar-Ilan and at other universities in Israel and abroad. These collaborations allow us both to test the validity of our tools in diverse projects and to contribute to many drug research efforts. We truly believe that the usage of computational tools could greatly assist in finding cures to many devastating diseases.