Asanga Bandara

Experience

1. Principal Computational Chemist

   Pledge Therapeutics

   Oct 2022 — Present · Boston, MA, US

   Managing two direct reports: an AI/ML Scientist and a Postdoctoral Associate in QM/MM applications- Developing a ML-driven co-crystal structure property-based flexible pharmacophore method with pharmacophore alignment and comparison capability- Developing AI and Bayesian Inference (experimental) augmented extension to the current hybrid GPU/CPU-based Giga-scale virtual screening platform to improve accuracy and access Tera-scale synthetically accessible \"Chemverse\"- End-to-end Optimizations of lead generation platform (Protocol optimization of Opteron-Robotics at the HTS assay level and Noise reduction filter implementation for Differential Scanning Fluorometry Screens (DSF)| Chemical Library design, Cheminformatics, and ML models for DNA Encoded Library Screens (DEL)| Data analysis and predictive model development for Calorimetric (ITC) Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR), Microscale Thermophoresis (MST) and Mass-Spec (MS)-based readouts)- Developing Deep-learning, and cheminformatics methods for improving in-silico characterization of ligand-protein interaction of novel anti-viral and immune-oncology targets with sparse structural data- Molecular modeling, Molecular simulations (AA/CG MD, REMD, MC), and Stat-Mech-based method development to compute relative and absolute binding free energies in protein-protein and protein-ligand complexes.

Education

• Boston University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

  Master of Arts - MA, Theoretical Chemistry

  2014 — 2016

• University of Colombo

  Bachelor of Science (BSc), Special Degree in Computational Chemistry

  2008 — 2012

• Boston University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Theoretical Chemistry

  2014 — 2019