Jacob Durrant

Jacob Durrant is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on computer-aided drug design (CADD), molecular dynamics simulations, and structural biology. He leads the Durrant Lab, which develops innovative computational tools for drug discovery, such as AutoGrow4 and ProteinVR. The lab investigates infectious diseases, cancer, and neurological disorders, emphasizing small-molecule ligand identification and molecular visualization.

Key affiliations include the Molecular Biophysics and Structural Biology Graduate Program, the Department of Computational & Systems Biology, and the Joint CMU-Pitt PhD Program in Computational Biology. Durrant collaborates on projects like the RECOVERY trial, exploring treatments for severe COVID-19. His work integrates machine learning, cloud computing, and GPU acceleration to advance drug discovery.

Research highlights include developing open-source tools (e.g., MolModa, FPocketWeb) and studying protein dynamics via molecular simulations. The lab’s ProteinVR project enables immersive virtual reality visualization of molecular structures for educational and collaborative purposes.