Dr. Bruna Jacobson is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico. Her research goal is to understand the underlying mechanisms that drive biomolecular interactions. These interactions are vital to the large majority of processes that sustain life, and when they go astray, they can lead to the onset of diseases and allergies. Research on biomolecular interaction and recognition is central to the development of new drugs and vaccines. In her work, she creates multiscale models of biological systems using data-driven methods in an interdisciplinary framework that uses techniques from robotics, graph theory, bioinformatics, biophysics, and machine learning. These models and simulations provide information and predictions that are then closely coupled to theoretical and experimental efforts to analyze biomolecular interactions across different length and time scales.

Jingbo Liang is a second year PhD student. She graduated from the Peking University with a M.S. in Medicine. Then, she worked as a pulmonary physician for 3 years. In 2021, she finished her M.S. program in BME at UNM and started her studies as a computer science student at UNM. Now she is interested in using computer science applied to biology.