About

My hope with this website is to write about what I’m learning about in the realm of protein science. This will likely involve topics like new computational skills I’ve picked up, or interesting things I’ve been reading. Currently, I’m trying to learn structural bioinformatics and use these skills more in my day to day research. I also want to learn how to computationally design proteins de novo. In general, my research interests mainly revolve around proteins and molecular evolution. I find it fascinating how proteins manage to perform the exquisite and specific tasks that we see in nature, all while following simple biophysical rules. How do proteins evolve? How do some proteins fold so perfectly, while others can barely stay folded long enough to work with in the lab? Can we design new proteins to do new sorts of molecular wizardry? I don’t expect to answer those questions here in this blog, but maybe I can answer some smaller technical questions to get to the bigger questions.

Bio

I’m a protein scientist and research officer based in the Greening Lab at Monash Uni, Melbourne Australia. I’m currently investigating proteins that extract energy from trace gases.

I started out doing an undergraduate degree in genetics at the University of Western Australia. When I finished undergrad, I held off on trying to do a PhD because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. I managed to get work as a research assistant at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research (Perth, Western Australia), where it turns out I had a knack for protein biochemistry and protein purification. Later on, I moved interstate after landing a research assistant job at WEHI (Melbourne, Victoria) and did even more protein biochemistry work. My research skills are primarily “wet-lab” based, though I’ve been slowly trying to evolve into a skilled “dry-lab” scientist too. With the fast speed at which the protein science field is moving, I think it’s more important than ever to be a well rounded scientist and master both the “wet” and “dry” aspects of biology.

When I’m not in the lab or on the computer, I like to hang out with my wife and two dogs. Sometimes, if there’s time, I like to read a book.