Wriggers Group News Room

Wriggers Relocates to New York City, Birmanns Named Successor in Houston

Biomachina founder Willy Wriggers will join David. E. Shaw and his privately funded research institute in Manhattan in the fall of 2007. Wriggers has also taken up a secondary faculty appointment at Weill Medical College of Cornell University (WMC). Assistant  Professor Stefan Birmanns has been promoted to tenure-track and will take over the mantle as Director of the Houston research program. Existing software developments and collaborations will continue uninterrupted.

FAQs answered by Willy Wriggers:

  1. Q: Why the move?   A: This arrangement gives me an opportunity to be free from grants and administrative responsibilities and to focus more on research and writing. D. E. Shaw Research (DESRES) specializes in long-time simulaton of protein dynamics. The group is incorporated on Times Square in Manhattan. Chief scientist David Shaw is also a Forbes-listed billionaire and his successful hedge fund and quantitative trading firm is housed in the same building. It's a fantastic opportunity and I'm sure many scientists would consider such an unconventional career move.

  2. Q: Are you leaving science / academia?   A: Although DESRES is a corporation I found their research environment very academic, not much different in many ways from a non-profit research organisation such as Scripps. I will report to David and I won't have students working for me, so I do give up a little freedom. However, the coworkers there are all first rate scientists who publish frequently. I am very enthusiastic about their research and I have no problems being a team player. When I look back at my career I was happiest when I had the opportunity to be personally involved in science. I have seen it all and went from student to tenure in nine years, what would be the next challenge? Also, if I do get an urge to teach or to interact with students, this is what I will do in a limited role at WMC.

  3. Q: What about your successor, Stefan Birmanns?   A: Stefan has collaborated with us starting in 2000, first as a graduate student and later he joined us as a postdoc. In 2006 he was promoted to faculty due to his significant contributions to the School of Health Information Sciences. Stefan knows all details of our operation and he is ideal for taking over the responsibilities. I've had a good time in Houston and will return on occasion to see what Stefan and his team are up to.

  4. Q: What will happen to your grants?    A: I'm very grateful to NIH, the Human Frontier Science Program, the Houston Keck Center, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the John P. McGovern Foundation, and many others for their past support.  Most grants are expiring naturally this year, except for my NIH R01 which will remain in Houston.

  5. Q: Are you leaving the Electron Microscopy field?   A:  I have been involved with the EM field for nearly 10 years and we have a reputation for our docking programs which are widely used in the community.  With thousands of users I made sure there is a plan in place for continued support and development. I will remain involved in a limited role in the support and development of UNIX-based Situs programs. Stefan will develop mainly his graphics based interactive program Sculptor.  We will continue to support existing collaborations and Stefan will take over most of them. New collaborations will be handled by me (in my free time) on selected occasions if flexible docking is involved.

  6. Q: What will be your new research interests?   A: I'm interested in statistical sampling of molecular dynamics (MD) trajectories as well as simulated folding and prediction of large scale domain movements. I started this work as a graduate student and later continued with my postdoc Zhiyong Zhang here in Houston. Many cancer-related systems require adequate sampling of the conformational variability. I believe that MD will see significant advances in this area in the near future through the new supercomputing architectures developed at DESRES.