Pranav Khade

I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Computational Biology at Iowa State University in the Jernigan lab. Before enrolling in the Ph.D. degree, I completed my Masters degree in Bioinformatics with a Bachelors degree in Biotechnology from the University of Pune, India.

During my Ph.D. I have successfully conceptualized, initiated, designed, and implemented several novel and innovative ideas, carrying out to successful completion. I have also built a software package called PACKing and Motion Analysis (PACKMAN) around my research, which now has more than 24k downloads on the Python Package Index (PyPI) (https://github.com/Pranavkhade/PACKMAN). The ultimate goal of my thesis has been to explain the global motions of the proteins using protein packing information, and I have made significant progress with this. Along with the research work, I have also completed various courses on diverse topics such as Structural Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Algorithms, Systems Biology, and many more. However, most importantly, Statistical Bioinformatics has trained me in developing statistically robust yet simple models of a type that can be applied to many systems.

During my Masters training, I learned more about Bioinformatics in Cell Biology, Immunology, Structural Biology, Genetics, Omics, Evolution, Cheminformatics, Data Mining, and Biostatistics. Overall, my Masters degree included a detailed overview of Bioinformatics. I learned everything from predicting epitomes given viral protein sequences to relating Single Nucleotide Polymorphism to phenotypes. My Masters research project was in Cheminformatics, where I designed a method to overcome the shortcomings of stochastic conformer generators.

Area of Expertise: Structural Biology and Bioinformatics