Dr. Katie Simmons biography

Katie Simmons is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, in the UK. After completing her Masters Degree in Chemistry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 2005, she began her PhD studies at the University of Leeds in the research group of Professor Colin Fishwick. The theme of her PhD was the design of novel antibacterial agents targeting peptidoglycan biosynthesis using computational methods. Upon completion of her PhD in 2008, she began Postdoctoral research work under a European initiative to develop novel ligands for membrane transporter proteins and ion channels using de novo design and virtual screening methods. During her work and studies in Leeds, she became an expert user of many cheminformatics methods and tools, and in particular virtual screening, docking and de-novo design methodologies and their application to challenging scientific problems has become one of her expertise.