Christopher Summa

Christopher Summa, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the Computer Science Department at the University of New Orleans (UNO). He holds a joint appointment with the Research Institute for Children at Children's Hospital of New Orleans, where he directs the Summa Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

His research spans computational biology and bioinformatics, with emphasis on:

• Molecular modeling and simulation techniques
• Protein structure prediction/refinement
• De novo protein design
• Large-scale macromolecular structure analysis

Dr. Summa teaches undergraduate and graduate courses including Software Design, Computer Graphics, Game Development, and Competition Programming. He also coordinates the UNO-CIBS outreach program introducing computational methods to K-12 students in biomedical sciences.

He leads the Summa Lab, currently advising 4 students and having mentored 8 others. His software contribution includes protCAD, a protein modeling toolkit developed during his Ph.D.