{"id":42330,"date":"2026-05-18T11:33:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T15:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/hic\/?page_id=42330"},"modified":"2026-06-23T09:27:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T13:27:50","slug":"42330-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/hic\/programs\/focused-research-programs\/frp-program-pages\/42330-2\/","title":{"rendered":"AI for Characterizing and Designing Biomolecular Interactions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Focused Research Program<\/b><\/h2>\n

Our Focus<\/b><\/h3>\n

This FRP will establish BU as a leader in the application and interpretation of biological foundation models for biomedical research. The program pursues two cross-cutting scientific goals\u2014developing principled fine-tuning strategies for adapting foundation models to new biochemical problems and building interpretability tools that reveal what these models encode about biomolecular interactions\u2014executed across three complementary interaction regimes that together enable cross-domain comparison no single-domain project could achieve. The interdisciplinary collaboration is essential: the convergence of computational and experimental expertise across olfaction, antibody design, and biosensing is what makes the cross-domain comparison rigorous, and the shared infrastructure developed here will lower barriers to foundation model adoption across the broader BU biomedical research community.<\/span><\/p>\n

Focused Research Program led by:<\/b><\/h3>\n

Brian DePasquale<\/b><\/a>,<\/span> Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering<\/span><\/p>\n

Diane Joseph-McCarthy<\/a>, <\/strong>Executive Director, Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center (BTEC); Professor of the Practice, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering<\/span><\/p>\n

James Galagan<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering<\/p>\n

Research Thrusts<\/b><\/h3>\n

1. <\/b>Interpretable AI Models for Understanding Odor<\/b><\/h4>\n

The goal of this thrust is to develop and apply protein and chemical foundation models to predict olfactory receptor\u2013odorant interactions across invertebrate and mammalian species, use these models to guide experimental screens in the disease-vector mosquito <\/span>Aedes aegypti<\/span><\/i>, and build complementary interpretability approaches\u2014including evolutionary program synthesis and physics-based binding site detection\u2014to discover the human-readable biochemical rules that govern chemical sensing across species.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thrust Champions<\/h5>
<\/p>\n

\n\t