Jacob Durrant
Associate Professor
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJacob D. Durrant is an associate professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh with a decade of experience developing and applying computer-aided drug discovery and computational structural biology methods to infectious disease and cancer targets. He leads the Durrant Lab in combining machine learning, big data, docking, and molecular dynamics to predict ligand poses and probe how protein motions influence binding, translating computational insight into experimentally validated inhibitors. His tool-driven approach has produced widely used algorithms (e.g., NNScore, POVME, BINANA, AutoGrow) and large-scale simulations, including contributions to one of the largest atomistic virion models ever assembled. Trained at UC San Diego and Brigham Young University, he blends deep quantitative skills in mathematics and modeling with a knack for practical software that accelerates drug-discovery campaigns. An unusual strength is his history of turning algorithmic advances into shared, user-friendly software that directly enabled follow-on animal-testing campaigns.
10 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
University of California San DiegoMasters of Science, Physiology and Developmental Biology, Masters of Science, Physiology and Developmental Biology at Brigham Young University
English, Portuguese, Spanish
Github Skills (72)
3d10
rendering10
engine10
webgl10
typescript10
packed10
webvr10
game-engine9
javascript9
webgpu9
game-development9
rendering-engine9
computational-biology9
bezier9
pdb-files8
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
durrantlab/autogrow4
Jun 2023 - Mar 2025
AutoGrow4 is an open-source program for semi-automated computer-aided drug discovery. It uses a genetic algorithm to evolve predicted ligands on demand and so is not limited to a virtual library of pre-enumerated compounds. AutoGrow4 is a useful tool for generating entirely novel drug-like molecules and for optimizing preexisting ligands.
Contributions:4 releases, 10 PRs, 111 pushes in 1 year 9 months
jcheminform/gypsum_dl
Aug 2018 - Jul 2020
Contributions:18 commits in 1 year 11 months
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.