Burgin Lab

About

The Burgin Lab focuses on computational enzyme engineering at the intersection of molecular dynamics simulations and machine learning. We develop new methods to obtain high-throughput data from highly accurate atomistic simulations that reveal the underlying biophysics of life chemistry, and apply state-of-the-art techniques in artificial intelligence to drive the next generation of biotechnology solutions to problems in health, energy, the environment, and green manufacturing.

We are currently hiring graduate students (especially PhD students) and postdoctoral researchers. Interested individuals should contact Professor Burgin at emme.burgin@dartmouth.edu.

Featured Research Projects

A diagram depicting the workflow for co-optimizing two steps of the PETase reaction with a neural network trained on simulations of each step. The model uses active learning to guide the collecting of more training data, eventually producing an optimized PETase, shown breaking down the PET in a water bottle into individual components.

Circular Plastic Bioeconomy

Enzymes that achieve complete degradation of one of the most common types of plastic in the world.

A diagram of a gas chamber containing carbonic anhydrase. Flue gas goes into the chamber at the bottom, and inside the chamber carbon dioxide and water is converted to bicarbonate and protons. Scrubbed flue gas exits the chamber at top.

Enzymatic Carbon Capture

Putting one of nature’s most efficient enzymes to work by capturing carbon dioxide emissions at the source.

A two-panel figure showing, at left, a zoomed in diagram of a restrained reaction transition state in the active site of an enzyme, and at right, a scatter plot showing an inverse linear relationship between simulation transition state complex root mean square fluctation and experimental activity measurements across six different enzyme variants.

Oligosaccharide Synthesis

Novel computational methods to extend the reach of enzyme engineering to manufacture new products at scale.