Hello! My name is David Jurkowitz and I am a junior studying biochemistry and Hebrew. I work in the Wheeler lab, which applies computational biology tools to genomics, biological sequence annotation, and drug discovery. My current project looks at computationally predicting binding pockets in proteins, which is done through comparing measurements of amino acid sequence conservation with known or predicted structural data. Through my lab, I have learned to code in Python, manipulate protein structures with pymol, and run scripts on the university’s high performance computing cluster. When not in classes or lab, I am often at the Hillel building or Olami house, two of the Jewish centers on campus, on a hike or bike ride, or planting trees around the city with Tucson Clean and Beautiful.
