My name is Ian Dunn. I am a third year PhD student in the Joint Carnegie Mellon - University of Pittsburgh PhD program in Computational Biology. David Koes is my advisor. I am broadly interested in developing machine learning methods which operate directly on 3D molecular structures. My current work is focused on deep generative models for structure-based drug design. Specfically, I’m interested in improving diffusion and diffusion-like models for molecules as well as exploring the theoretical connections between neural SDEs and molecular dynamics. I also work on applied drug discovery projects; I’ve participated in two CACHE challenges which resulted in the discovery of multiple experimentally valdiated hit compounds as well as five “potential hits” which are still being tested.

I graduated from Rowan University in 2019 with a Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering. Before attending graduate school, I worked as an Associate Scientist at Pfizer for two years.