Group Members

Samuel Schmitz

Current Graduate Student

MS in Biology, University of Regensburg, Germany
Samuel.Schmitz [ at ] vanderbilt.edu
Vanderbilt University - MBRIII 5140 Office Suite

Research Interests:

• Rosetta Design
• Antibody Repertoires
• Big-Data
• DeepLearning

Co-mentored by Dr. James Crowe (Crowe Lab)

Project Description:

My research interests are the understanding and modeling of the driving forces which give rise to complex systems, such as the functional and evolutional restraints which guide the change of protein sequences over time. My PhD research is devoted to the study of the mutational variance in the human antibody sequence space. I use a multidisciplinary approach of both structural modeling and bioinformatics to combine big-data with computational structural modeling. This enables me to currently harvest the largest available datasets of antibody sequences and structures to inform antibody design and engineering for medical applications.
The impressive increase in sequenced antibodies and structures, as well as the latest advances in Deep Learning, build the foundation of my efforts in research and development. My PhD work has led to a substantial catalog of novel computational models, which enable me to characterize, analyze, and engineer antibody sequences. First, methods have been developed to combine sequencing data with structural modeling, cluster large scale immunome repertoires of ~1 billion sequences, and finally inform the structural design of antibodies with real observed human sequences. Second, we use machine intelligence of engineered antibodies for increased manufacturability in the context of therapeutics, vaccines, and research.

Publication Link:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gvqh1mEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra