Highly-cited postdoc lands coveted prize for PhD research

Dr Carlos Rodrigues, former graduate researcher from the Dept of Biochemistry & Pharmacology, has been awarded the prestigious Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in PhD Thesis.

The computational biology tools Carlos developed during his doctoral studies have since been used across the world in industry and academia. Using sophisticated data analysis and AI techniques Carlos developed approaches that looked at the relationship of genetic mutation and disease development – and aided in the rapid identification of new drugs.

As part of his doctoral studies, under the supervision of Dr David Ascher in the Dept of Biochemistry & Pharmacology, Carlos facilitated the uptake and translation of his methods with industry. Most notably, they were implemented within a structure guided approach to identify drug resistant mutations in Tuberculosis infections - and more recently to model the consequences of genetic changes in SARS-CoV-2 which led to a research partnership with Pfizer.

Carlos’ success in this area saw him publish 21 publications in top international journals during his doctoral studies - 6 as first-author - with over 870 citations to date.

It is the significant and rapidly developing impact of his work that saw Carlos recognized this year as one of six recipients of The Chancellor’s Prize for his thesis,  "Development of tools to help understand and map protein-protein Interactions".

Up to six Prizes are awarded each year and are judged on the basis of international recognition and impact of the research, publications or other related research outputs and recognition of the research through professional organisations, prizes and awards.

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Dr Carlos Rodrigues now works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics laboratory in the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute.

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