Molecular Art | Molecular Science: David Goodsell

Escherichia coli cross-section, from "The Machinery of Life"

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, where I currently divide my time between research and science outreach. My research centers on methods for predicting and analyzing biomolecular complexes, and application of these methods to drug discovery and drug design. In my postdoctoral work with Arthur Olson, I developed the automated docking method AutoDock, which has grown in the past two decades to become the most widely-used docking program in the scientific community. Since then, I have developed techniques within AutoDock to address challenging topics such as estimation of binding free energies, drug discovery and optimization, and protein function prediction. In my science outreach work, I have developed new visual methods for exploring molecular and cellular structure. I currently author a monthly column at the RCSB Protein Data Bank that presents molecular structure and function for general audiences, and I have written three general-interest books on molecular biology, cell biology and bionanotechnology. I have also collaborated with science museums, filmmakers, educators and popular authors on the creation of educational and outreach materials.

To explore more of my work, please visit my WWW page at the Molecular Graphics Laboratory.