Lydia Freddolino

Lydia Freddolino is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan in the Medical School, affiliated with the Department of Biological Chemistry and Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics. Her research focuses on the regulatory networks of bacteria, aiming to develop quantitative, predictive models to understand bacterial decision-making processes and their implications for antimicrobial therapies and synthetic biology applications.

• Education:
  • Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computational Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2009)
  • B.S. with Honors in Biology, California Institute of Technology (2004)

Her work integrates high-throughput experimental methods with molecular simulation and mathematical modeling to study biomolecular interactions and regulatory networks across atomistic to cellular length scales. Recent projects include analyzing RNA-based regulation and chromatin structure in bacteria.

Key trends in her publications include deep learning for protein and RNA structure prediction, regulatory networks in pathogenic bacteria, and computational tools for functional genomics.

Scientific Awards

• NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00)
• Beckman Fellowship
• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
• Distinguished Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Sigma Xi Award for Undergraduate Research
• President’s Scholarship, Caltech

Students in her lab gain interdisciplinary training in molecular biology, microbiology, bioinformatics, and programming, with opportunities to work on projects spanning gene regulation to protein-DNA interactions. She has received grants for computational biology research and protein structure prediction tools, and her lab contributes to databases like BioLiP2 and FURNA for RNA and protein interactions.