The Introductions Thread!

[bharath]

Hey folks ! Let’s use this thread to introduce ourselves.

I’m Bharath Ramsundar. I started the DeepChem project while I was doing my PhD in the Pande group at Stanford. I wanted to democratize access to deep learning tools for drug discovery, and got passionately interested in the idea of bootstrapping the use of AI for curing disease. I’ve written some books about AI. As I finished my PhD, I realized that getting access to interesting datasets was one of the core limitations for building more sophisticated AI systems, and that crypto brought a powerful set of tools that could incentivize the construction of new datasets in a fair and sustainable fashion, so I co-founded a startup in the space after graduating.

These days, I am excited about accelerating the design and development of small molecules with AI at Deep Forest Sciences

The best way to follow me is on Twitter .

[peastman]

Hello! I’m Peter Eastman. I’m a staff software engineer in the Pande group at Stanford. My time is split between developing DeepChem, developing OpenMM (a toolkit for molecular dynamics simulation), and doing research on various topics (mostly related to the intersection of deep learning and physics).

[VijayPande]

Hey – Vijay Pande here. I’m very excited about this project and how we can help make it easier for people to use Deep Learning on molecules.

[RodrigoZepeda]

Hi! This is Rodrigo Zepeda (Rod, as in fishing). I am a mathematician who recently came about this project which seems pretty interesting.

[Vignesh]

Hi!
My name is Vignesh and I am a Master’s student in Computational Biology at ETH Zurich. I have been contributing to DeepChem for quite a while now, and currently work as a Google Summer of Code intern with them.

My previous research has been around using Deep Learning in Biology, but now I am looking to gain more experience in using it to Chemistry, and later tying the two fields together.

[jonathanking]

Hello! My name is Jonathan King. I’m a PhD student in the Joint Carnegie Mellon - University of Pittsburgh Computational Biology program and a member of the Koes Group. Our group has been developing machine learning methods for structure-based drug discovery and, more recently, protein structure prediction.

I’m eager to learn more about the DeepChem project and share my interests in machine learning applications in medicine/health with the community!

[PatWalters]

Hi, I’m Pat Walters and I’ve been working in computational drug discovery for more than 20 years and with machine learning for even longer. I occasionally write papers and I also write a blog called “Practical Cheminformatics” which frequently contains some (hopefully) useful code. All of the code from the blog, and a bit more, can be found on GitHub. In collaboration with Vijay, Bart, and Peter, I co-wrote a book called “Deep Learning for the Life Sciences”, which provides an introduction (with code) to the use of deep learning in a variety of life science topics.

[vikram]

Hi,

I am amith ranga. In my current role i am trying to drug a histone acetyl transferase. I did some HTVS and got a few hits. now i am trying to set myself up for using deepchem.

thanks for having me,
amith ranga

[TaranSinghania]

Hi! My name is Taran Singhania. I’m a sophomore at PES University, Bangalore. I came across DeepChem while browsing through the GSoC projects and well, the idea behind it and the projects interested me a lot. Looking forward to contributing and learning from everyone here!

[ncfrey]

Hi everyone,

I’m Nathan Frey. I’m a PhD candidate in Materials Science at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m also a visiting researcher with the Materials Project at Berkeley Lab, where I do some development on materials science codes like pymatgen and atomate. I’m interested in expanding DeepChem’s materials science functionality and then getting more involved in cheminformatics and drug discovery.

Feel free to get in touch with me via email or twitter!

[Aniruddha]

Hello everyone - Aniruddha Seal here. I am a chem undergrad at NISER Bhubaneswar. I like to learn and tinker with software and occasionally write code (in Python and C) during my leisure hours. I’m also a visiting researcher with the Membrane Biophysics Lab at IISc Bangalore, where I do some methodology development. I’m interested in working with DeepChem’s Open Source Medicine Development project.

Looking forward to contributing and learning from here!

[amv]

Hello All, I’m Akhila. I’m a recent PhD graduate from French National Institute for Health and Medicine in Bioinformatics. I worked on Antibody Variable domain structure and sequences during my PhD. I’m currently on a post-doc hunt. I’m here to learn add AI methods to my skill set primarily. I’m also a big fan of community learning, teaching and herd intelligence aimed at understanding and arresting disease mechanisms. I previously participated in the IBM Dream Challenge of understanding Artemisinin drug resistance in Malaria (although my model did not fare well) I enjoyed the whole experience. Since then I’m in pursuit of such online collaborative platforms.

[shak360]

Hi everyone, I’m Shakthi Visagan. I’m a recent UCLA bioengineering graduate. I worked on creating a Python framework to analyze heterogeneity in heritable phenotypes in cell lineage trees using hidden Markov models for my undergraduate senior capstone. I also helped build surrogate models for ultrasound simulations during my time at UCLA. I’m currently in the limbo that exists between undergraduate and graduate school and am hoping to broaden my skillset. I’m interested in learning more about deep learning and creating open-source machine learning software that many users of all backgrounds can use. I’m looking forward to making some contributions and learning a lot : ).

[ameyabhamare]

Hi everyone! Ameya Bhamare here.

I’m a CS undergrad at PES University, Bangalore. Currently an Intern at Grofers in the Analytics team.

I’m a Deep Learning enthusiast and like doing projects in my leisure time. I have recently taken up a research project on Drug Research which is how I came across DeepChem among other libraries like RDKit and StellarGraph.

I found it to be extremely useful and have learnt a lot in a short span of time. Looking forward to contributing to this interesting project on the way. Cheers!

[fabiooliveira-at-uib]

Hello!
I am Fábio. I have started my PhD a few months ago in a project with the goal of developing new data sets and new ML methods for protein-drug affinity prediction.
I have just discovered DeepChem and I look forward to explore it!

[amehdi]

Hi!
I am Adam from Las Vegas, Nevada. I do not yet have a formal technical background, but I have been studying deep learning for the past several months, and wish to explore its applications to biology.

I worked through and am revisiting you guys’ delightful book (Deep Learning for the Life Sciences) and am now studying the DeepChem tutorials and doing little projects. Love it so far; hope I can contribute in the months to come!

[ignaczgerg]

Hi!
I am Gergo, a PhD student from KAUST. I am a chemical and pharmaceutical engineer and I studied computer science as well for a short time. I would like to implement machine learning and neural networks into my research.
Deepchem’s vision to improve the quality of our life via better drug design was a huge motivation to start working with it.

[MiloszGrabski]

Hi,
I am Milosz, a research scientist at Sygnature Discovery. A synthetic chemist with strong passion for programing that lead to switching from wet chemistry to excessive typing.

[squeeko]

Hey there folks, my name is Jermaine Allgood and I’m a data scientist specializing in AI, deep/machine learning based in the Seattle, WA area. I am very interested in life sciences and using the DeepChem library for molecular analysis. I am going through your book and really enjoying going through the exercises, Bharath!

Glad to be joining the group, learning and sharing knowledge!

[Sanjivp27]

Hi everyone. My name is Sanjiv Parthasarathy. I am currently a high school senior in Allentown, PA. I was originally introduced to AI and ML when collaborating with a professor at Lehigh University on a research project. I am very interested in this project and hope to become much more well versed in the topics that it addresses.