I am interested in questions in computational molecular biology, in particular, using sophisticated computational techniques for studying protein structure. I work in two different labs: the Levitt lab, which focuses on structural biology, and the Guibas lab, which focuses on computational geometry. A common thread in my studies is trying to quantify, or mathematically model, biological observations. My current research revolves around three projects: the first project offers a particularly efficient approximation for modeling protein structure using backbone fragments; the second project is an in-depth study of protein structure alignment, which includes a proof that the best alignment can be found in polynomial time, and a large scale comparison of structural alignment methods; the third project outlines a fast algorithm for multiple sequence alignment, which relies on conservation of biological sequence patterns.