Auburn Engineering PhD student honored for computational biology research

Sutanu Bhattacharya, a doctoral student in computer science and software engineering at Auburn University, won second place in the Young Scientist Excellence Award competition at the 2019 Midsouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society annual conference March 28-30.

Bhattacharya was recognized for his presentation titled “Does inclusion of residue‐residue contact information boost protein threading?” His research focuses on improving a technique known as protein threading to better predict the three-dimensional structure of proteins.  

Being able to accurately predict the 3-D structure of proteins will provide scientists with a better understanding of how proteins work, which can improve drug development processes.

Bhattacharya began his doctoral studies at Auburn in 2017 after completing his bachelor’s degree at the Bengal Institute of Technology and his master’s degree at Jadavpur University, both in India.

Bhattacharya works under the direction of Debswapna Bhattacharya, assistant professor of computer science and software engineering. Computational biology and machine learning are the two major research thrusts of the Bhattacharya Group, which is housed in Auburn’s Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.