معرفی
Nurit Haspel is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston) and serves as the CS Undergraduate Program Director. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research associate at Rice University’s Physical and Biological Computing group and earned her PhD in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University, focusing on structural bioinformatics. Her primary research interests include computational structural biology, protein flexibility modeling, and the development of algorithms for understanding molecular biology, nanobiology, and biochemistry. She has advised numerous graduate and undergraduate students, including Dr. Ramin Dehghanpoor, who defended his PhD thesis in 2022.
Her academic roles include teaching advanced courses such as Algorithms in Bioinformatics (CS612) and serving as PC Chair for ACM-BCB 2022. Haspel’s work emphasizes the design of protein-based nanostructures and computational methods for analyzing protein conformational changes. She collaborates on grants like the NSF-funded AF: SMALL project on protein conformational landscapes. Her research also extends to fusion transcript detection and machine learning-driven bioinformatics applications.
Publications span topics like RRT*-based protein pathway exploration, hormone fragmentation signaling, and Monte Carlo simulations. She is affiliated with UMass Boston’s structural bioinformatics research group and has contributed chapters to books on computational drug design and mutagenesis. Her lab focuses on bridging computational methods with experimental nano-design challenges in biochemistry.
