A. Prof. Megan O'Mara has been recently highlighted in the lastest 'Humans of NCI" (National Computational Infrastructure) news.

This series takes a look at the people behind the scenes of the science and the supercomputing, invisible behind the datasets and the virtual laboratories, the people who keep them running and those who use them for discoveries that impove our world.

Extract from the NCI article:

"I’m very proud of my research group: the way they complement each other’s strengths and abilities, how they work together as a team to support each other and do fantastic science."

"I’m fascinated by how cells work and understanding the machinery of life through simulations. My research is all about understanding the complexity of the cell membrane, how we can design drugs that target proteins embedded in the cell membrane to alter chemical signalling across the membrane, and how bacteria evade the action of antibiotics through drug efflux pumps and other factors, and we do this using Newtonian dynamics. It’s research that combines biology, chemistry and physics and it allows me to collaborate with so many different researchers on a range of problems. There are so many interesting problems and I never get bored! My group is working on a few different problems at the moment. Most of them are focused on the cell membrane. We were very privileged to be awarded an Australasian Leadership Computing Grant to work on Covid-19. We’re trying to understand the protein complex that forms the human receptor for the virus, and screen potential drugs that can stop the coronavirus binding to the receptor and infecting the cell."

To read the article in full: https://nci.org.au/research/people/aprof-megan-omara

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