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Welcome to Kin Chao (also known as Rain Chao; or street name R周)’s research and personal website.

I am currently a first year computational chemistry PhD student in Jon Essex’s group at the University of Southampton, joinly funded by AstraZeneca (Sweden) and the University of Southampton. My research focuses on computational modelling for a new drug modality called PROTAC. Specifically, my project involves computational techniques that are relevant in a drug discovery context, including molecular dynamics simulations, enhanced sampling techniques, (and database method, ML/AI techniques, free energy calculation etc).

Previously I completed a 3-month computational chemistry internship in AstraZeneca in Cambridge, working on computational modelling for antibody-drug conjugate (ADC). I also finished a 1-year research placement in the Scientific Computing Department at UKRI STFC (2023-2024), doing a bit of MD simulations and computational cryoEM. During my UG at Imperial, I was involved in serveral computational structural biology research projects in Sarah Rouse’s lab in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London (2 Years +). I graduated my BSc degree in Medicinal Chemistry (with a year in industry) at Imperial College London (2020-2024).

I am a co-founder of the “Macau-UK Biomedical Journal Club” together with Ashley and Brandon from Nov 2024. The club has since grown to seven members from diverse background including biochemistry, pharmacology, computational chemistry, and biochemical engineering. We hold weekly meetings every Friday, please contact me if you are interested in joining.