Showing articles associated with Garrett M. Morris

Originally an Oxford undergraduate Chemist, Prof. Morris moved to The Scripps Research Institute in California, and later two University of Oxford spinouts, joining the Department of Statistics in 2015 as an Associate Professor in Systems Approaches to Biomedicine. He is also a Co-Director of the EPSRC & MRC Systems Approaches to Biomedical Science Centre for Doctoral Training, renewed in 2019 as the ESPRC Sustainable Approaches to Biomedical Science: Responsible and Reproducible Research Centre for Doctoral Training. Prof. Morris is also the Secretary of the Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society.

What is your main area(s) of interest/expertise?

Applications of statistical methods, machine learning, and methods development in computer-aided drug discovery, chiefly: high throughput protein-ligand docking, ligand-based virtual screening, network pharmacology, systems chemical biology, and cheminfomatics. 

What are you working on right now?

Prof. Morris is developing methods and models to understand the substrate specificity of SARS-CoV-2 main protease, Mpro, and also how non-covalent and covalent inhibitors bind to Mpro. Prof. Morris is also collaborating with the COVID-19 Moonshot project to develop novel knowledge-based covalent protein-ligand docking methods, specifically to identify novel inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro.

Why is Oxford a good place to work in this field of research?

Oxford has an amazing concentration of expertise in biomolecular research, not to mention our tight links with the synchrotron at Diamond Light Source: they have made impressive progress identifying the structures of novel fragment binders of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro, greatly accelerating our efforts to discover novel treatments against COVID-19.

Find out more about Garrett

http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/all-people/garrett-morris/

https://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/about/fellows/garrett-morris/

Garrett M. Morris