Dr. Brian Chen's research focuses primarily on bioinformatics and the development of algorithms that make structural observations to elucidate the structural and chemical properties of interfaces formed by proteins, as they bind to other molecules, to extract information about function and specificity. He is interested in interactive, analytical algorithms that assist biologists seeking to better understand functional mechanisms in proteins, and also methods that automate the annotation of protein functions and functional components. Recent projects include identifying structural determinants of substrate specificity and structure-based annotation of protein functions.
Dr. Chen served as a postdoctoral research scientist in Barry Honig's Lab at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at Columbia University.