G. Andrés Cisneros

Professor G. Andrés Cisneros serves as Department Head for Physics and Professor of Physics, Chemistry and Biochemistry at the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Texas at Dallas. He leads the Cisneros Research Group, which focuses on computational methods development and their application to biochemical systems.

Dr. Cisneros earned his BSc in Chemistry from UNAM in 1999 and his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Duke University in 2004. His research spans multiple areas of computational chemistry and biochemistry with a particular emphasis on developing advanced methods for studying complex biological systems.

His research interests center on computational methods development, particularly for QM/MM simulations with advanced polarizable force fields. His lab investigates enzymatic reaction mechanisms, focusing on DNA transaction enzymes and their role in disease processes. Another major focus is the determination of disease biomarkers, where his group has developed novel methods like Hypothesis Driven-SNP-Search (HyDn-SNP-S) for identifying disease-related genetic variants. His work also includes advanced force field development, particularly for polarizable simulations of complex biochemical systems.

Analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong trend toward computational approaches to understanding DNA repair mechanisms, cancer-associated mutations, and the development of polarizable force fields for increasingly complex simulations. His work bridges quantum mechanics and molecular dynamics to tackle challenging problems in biochemistry and medicine, with particular emphasis on DNA transaction enzymes and their role in disease processes.

Dr. Cisneros has received numerous scientific awards including:

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry
• Outstanding Hispanic Student Mentor - SACNAS (2020)
• Early Career Award - Office for Research and Innovation, University of North Texas (2019)
• Faculty Award for Research - College of Science, University of North Texas (2018)
• Distinguished Visiting Professor - The Mexican Academy of Sciences (2018)
• National Strategic Computing Initiative participant - The White House (2016)

Dr. Cisneros has secured substantial research funding including:

• $2,105,413 NIH grant (R35GM151951) for Computational Simulation of DNA Transaction Enzymes
• $137,374 DARPA grant (HR00112330022) for Simulating Electrolytic DNA Chemistry on Noisy Quantum Devices (as co-PI)
• $1,448,000 NIH/NIGMS grant (R01GM108583) for Investigation of DNA Modifying Enzymes
• $502,000 NSF grant (CHEM/CLP 1856162) for Computational Investigation of Solvent Effects on Enzyme Catalysis

The Cisneros Research Group is actively developing several computational tools including LICHEM for QM/MM calculations, gem.pmemd for classical MD with polarizable force fields, Tinker-HP for polarizable molecular dynamics, GEM_Fit for calculating distributed multipoles, VDW_Opt for optimizing Van der Waals parameters, and HyDn-SNP-S for identifying disease-related SNPs. His lab collaborates with multiple institutions and has made significant contributions to the field of computational biochemistry.