Medicinal Chemist
Computational Chemist
Southern Research Institute
2000 Ninth Avenue South
Birmingham, AL 35205
205-581-2361
zhangw@southernresearch.org
Dr. Wei Zhang received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 2005 from the University of Delaware, where he studied computational chemistry, protein folding, protein structure prediction/refinement, and force field development. After postdoctoral studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Dr. Zhang joined Southern Research and is currently a computational chemist.
Dr. Zhang's research interests focus on the development and application of computational approaches for modeling and understanding biological processes at the molecular level. Current studies involve both computer-aided drug design (CADD) and molecular modeling of various biomolecular systems.
With state-of-the-art computational chemistry software, a wide range of computational techniques involving advanced modeling, simulation, and visualization are employed in CADD projects to discover, design, and optimize biologically active compounds, including: structure-and ligand-based drug design; virtual high throughput screening (vHTS); similarity searching; ADME prediction; property filters; compound library enumeration; and, QSAR modeling.
Dr. Zhang also conducts computational studies on protein structure prediction, protein-protein interactions, and protein-ligand interactions to explore underlying mechanisms relating protein structure, dynamics and functions. A few of his current studies include GPCRs, protein kinases, and neurotransporters.