Dr. Lydia Kavraki
Robot Motion Planning
In robotics we are interested in motion planning with
emphasis on high-dimensional systems, assembly planning,
reasoning with sensing and control uncertainty, flexible
object manipulation, physical modeling, probabilistic
methods in robotics. The projects available include
planning the paths of a robot with constraints, the use
of physics-based simulators in motion planning and
the development of web services that will allow the remote
use of the tools developed in our laboratory.
Computer Assisted Drug Design
Designing effective drugs and novel functional materials requires
modeling molecular interactions. The picture of molecular interactions
is dynamic because of the flexibility of molecules. For instance,
proteins undergo important functional motions that span a broad range
of time scales. A first step towards a better understanding of
molecular interactions is modeling protein flexibility at multiple
resolutions. Our goal is to characterize multi-scale protein flexibility.
We need computational methods to span a large range of time and length
scales with inhomogeneous and hierarchical level of detail. We need a
robust physicochemical formulation to characterize protein
flexibility to a degree that redirects expensive experiments to
well-defined goals. We have already developed methods that incorporate
robotics algorithms with a statistical mechanics formulation to study
the mobility of particular protein regions. The proposed project will
further investigate robotics, computational geometry and graphics
techniques for modeling the flexibility of protein molecules.
Thi project also involves the development of a web-based tool.
Contact Information
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