Rebecca F. Alford

Rebecca F. Alford is a senior studying computational chemistry at Carnegie Mellon and an undergraduate researcher in Jeff Gray's Lab at Johns Hopkins. Her research focuses on developing computational tools for modeling membrane proteins in Rosetta and understanding the role of different cell membrane compositions. Aside from her research, Rebecca is dedicated to increasing diversity in computational fields, especially by women and students with disabilities. To meet this goal, she actively mentors high school students, co-led a team of Rosetta students to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and co-developed a program to introduce middle school girls to computational thinking. Rebecca will graduate from Carnegie Mellon this spring and pursue a Ph.D. in Biophysics starting Fall 2016 with the ultimate goal of engineering computational tools to investigate diseases and develop drugs to treat them.