Dimitrios Morikis, PhD

Dr. Dimitrios Morikis is Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California Riverside (UCR). He is also faculty member at UCR’s Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program and the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology. His work is highly cross-disciplinary using methods from biophysics, structural biology, computational chemistry, biomolecular informatics, and bioengineering. His current work focuses on immune system function and regulation, knowledge-based drug design, design of proteins with tailored properties, design of peptide-single elements of secondary structure, and development of structural bioinformatics methods. His research is hybrid, computational, with emphasis on electrostatic calculations, molecular dynamics simulations, and docking-based virtual screening, and experimental, with emphasis on NMR spectroscopy. Dr. Morikis has been working on the development of complement system inhibitors for 17 years, and he has been co-developer of compstatin family peptides that are candidates to become therapeutics for macular degeneration.