Director
Dr. Homayoun Valafar
Dr. Valafar received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and computer engineering from Michigan technological university and Purdue (M.S. & Ph.D.) in 1988, 1990 and 1995 respectively. Following his graduation he received two post doctoral fellowship appointments with Drs. Peter Albersheim and James Prestegard in the areas of structure determination of carbohydrates and computational methods of protein structure determination. Before joining USC as an assistant professor he served as the bioinformatics project coordinator at the Southeast Collaboratory for Structural Genomics (SECSG).
Postdoctoral researchers
Rishi Mukhopadhyay
Rishi Mukhopadhyay received his B.S. in Computer Science from Cornell University's College of Engineering in 2005. During this time he was funded by the NSF REU program at Oakland University for the summers of 2002 and 2003 where he researched and published in the area of content-based image retrieval. Following his graduation he came to get his PhD at the University of South Carolina where he was a Rothberg Fellow in Bioinformatics from 2005-2007.
Stephanie Jiménez Irausquin
In 2002, Stephanie Irausquin received her Bachelor’s Degree with honors in Exercise Science from the University of South Carolina. She returned to the University of South Carolina in 2005 as a student in the Professional Science Master’s Program and subsequently obtained a P.S.M. Degree with an emphasis in Bioinformatics in 2007, as well as a Doctoral Degree in Biological Sciences in 2010. Her current research is in the area of molecular dynamics.
Graduate Students
Matthew Fawcett
Matthew Fawcett received his B.S. in Computer Science from Clemson University in 2000. He then received his M.S. in Mathematics from Clemson University in 2002. His research involved ray tracing and computer graphics. He returned to school in 2006 to pursue his P.h.d in Computer Science. He is currently working on research in protein sidechains and protein refinement.
Paul Shealy
Paul Shealy received his B.S. in Computer Science from Clemson University in 2002, where he was a Palmetto Fellow. He received his M.S. in Computer Science from Duke University in 2004. His thesis research at Duke focused on object tracking in videos. He also performed research on tolerating hard faults in microprocessors as part of the FaultFinder project. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science at USC, where he is a Rothberg Fellow in bioinformatics.
Mikhail Simin
Mikhail came to America from Russia in 1998 with his family. He graduated an American high school and entered USC in 2004. He received his B.S. from University of South Carolina in 2008, in Electrical Engineering with emphasis on semiconductor devices. His last year in Electrical Engineering he acted as the president of student branch of IEEE. Entering graduate school he switched over to Computer Science and chose a research field in bioinformatics. At the moment he is researching protein folding with limited RDC data for Dr. Valafar.
Chris Schmidt
Chris recieved his B.S. in Computer Information Systems from the University of South Carolina in 2009. He is currently pursuing a M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering. Chris's work focuses on maintaining and updating REDCAT as well as integrating REDCAT with VMD. Chris has also worked on a java-based interface for Xplor-NIH scripting.
Undergraduate Students
Andreea Stoichita
Andreea Stoichita is an undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina pursuing a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering, with minor in Spanish. Andreea is a Palmetto Fellowship recipient and a member of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. Also a premed student she plans on getting an MD degree after finishing her undergraduate studies. Andreea has conducted research in the area of bioinformatics and computational biology under her mentors Mikhail Simin and Dr. Homayoun Valafar.
Mark Williams
Mark Williams is an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina. He is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in computer science, and intends to pursue a Ph.D. after graduation. He has been conducting research over the past summer with his mentors, Dr. Homayoun Valafar and graduate student Paul Shealy, in the field of computational biology and bioinformatics.
Ahmed Khawaja
Ahmed Khawaja is an undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina pursuing a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, with a minor in Mathematics. Ahmed is a pre-med student and plans on acquiring dual MD/PhD degrees after graduation. He has been conducting research with Dr. Homayoun Valafar in the field of protein structure validation and intends on moving to the problem of de novo protein structure prediction.
Dustin Dalton Brown
Dalton started at USC Sumter in Fall 2008 and transferred to USC Columbia in Spring 2010. He is currently pursuing a Bachelors in Computer Science.
Former Graduate Students
Rishi Mukhopadhyay
Rishi Mukhopadhyay received his B.S. in Computer Science from Cornell University's College of Engineering in 2005. During this time he was funded by the NSF REU program at Oakland University for the summers of 2002 and 2003 where he researched and published in the area of content-based image retrieval. Following his graduation he came to get his PhD at the University of South Carolina where he was a Rothberg Fellow in Bioinformatics from 2005-2007.
Dr. Xijiang Miao
Xijiang Miao specializes in computational biology. He has a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from Xian Institute of Technology and a Master's in Computer Science from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He completed his MS in Biology, University of South Carolina, with a thesis in phylogenetic analysis (2004, P.J.Waddell supervisor) and his Ph.D in Computer Science, also at USC, with a dissertation in protein structure classification (2007, H.Valafar supervisor).
Ryan Yandle
Ryan Yandle received his B.S. in Computer Information Systems from the University of South Carolina in 2007. He is currently pursuing a M.S. in Computer Science. Ryan's current work is focused on PDPA. Ryan is a native of South Carolina and a Boy Scouts of America Eagle Scout. He is an avid outdoorsman who enjoys hunting, fishing, and camping. He has begun work at Microsoft in the Microsoft Office Division.
Former Undergraduate Students
Melanie Santos
Melanie Santos is an undergraduate student from Puerto Rico. She is studying Industrial Biotechnology at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez Campus and after graduation she will pursue graduated studies in the area of biomedicine. During the summer, she has been working with Rishi Mukhopadhyay and Dr. Valafar on protein structure simulation.
Zach Swearingen
Zach Swearingen is an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina. He is working for a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, with minors in both Physics and Mathematics. He has been conducting research over the past summer with his mentors, Dr. Homayoun Valafar and graduate student Paul Shealy, in the field of computational biology and bioinformatics.Parker Bush
Parker Bush is an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina. He is currently pursuing a bachelor's of computer science, and intends to pursue his M.S. after graduation. He has been working with Paul Shealy and Dr. Valafar on the development of msTALI over the past year, and is currently working on deploying a version to the web.
Liz Timko
A graduate of the South Carolina Honors College, Elizabeth Timko has finished her bachelor's degree in Computer Science, with minors in both Mathematics and Business Administration. She has conducted research in the areas of computational biology and bioinformatics for the past year under her mentor, Dr. Homayoun Valafar. Her research topic in protein folding has led to a Magellan Scholarship in 2008, and her research results have recently been accepted for publication and presentation at BioComp08, a prestigious conference ranked in the top 5 percent of all computer science conferences. After receiving her undergraduate degree, Liz plans to continue on to a master's degree, also in Computer Science.
Sarah Deuell
Sarah Deuell is an undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina Honors College. She is working toward a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. She just began working on research with her mentors Dr. Valafar, and Rishi Mukhopadhyay last year in the area of computational biology. She wants to go on to graduate school to receive a master's degree in Computer Science. She is a diver on the South Carolina Swimming and Diving Team, and also a member of Fellow Christian Athletes(FCA).
Other Past Undergraduate Students
- J.D. White
- Andrell Shaw (aka Zell)
- Stephen Smith
