Associate Professor Jessica Holien‘s research career to date bridges the chemistry-biology divide, incorporating medicinal chemistry, biology and computational modelling. After her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry, Jess has used her computational modelling skills to understand protein structure and function as well as to identify and develop small molecules in both academic and industry settings.

Jessica has strong industry links, providing computational modelling support to biotechnology companies, including Pathios Therapeutics, VAST and MycRx. Academically, her lab uses cutting-edge, machine learning methods to enrich traditional bioinformatic analysis and improve high-throughput chemistry screens, leading to faster small-molecule chemical-hit identification. Jessica is particularly interested in understanding the mechanisms behind protein-protein interactions and developing tools to design small molecule inhibitors to modulate them.