Dr. Verkhivker is currently Professor of Computational Biosciences and Translational Medicine at Chapman University and Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Department of Pharmacology, UC San Diego. He received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Moscow University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in computational biophysics from University of Illinois at Chicago in 1992. Dr. Verkhivker was one of the founding scientists at Agouron Pharmaceuticals Inc, in early 1990s and played a leading role in establishing computer-aided structure-based design technology. In 1993-2006, Dr. Verkhivker has held various research and management positions at Agouron Pharmaceuticals, Warner- Lambert, Pfizer Global Research and Development, La Jolla Laboratories. Since 2002, he has been Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UC San Diego. In 2006, he joined School of Pharmacy and Center for Bioinformatics, The University of Kansas as a Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Bioinformatics. In 2011 Dr. Verkhivker assumed position of Full Professor of Computational Biosciences & Translational Medicine at Schmid College of Science & Technology and Professor at the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Chapman University School of Pharmacy. Dr. Verkhivker authored more than 250 peer reviewed publications and is recognized for his research contributions in the fields of translational bioinformatics, computational biophysics and structure-based drug discovery of targeted and personalized anti-cancer agents. His most recent research activities are in the areas of computational systems biology, translational bioinformatics and systems pharmacology with the focus on integration of computational and experimental systems biology approaches in translational research.
Biography
Dr. Verkhivker is currently Professor of Computational Biosciences at Schmid College of Science & Technology, Chapman University and Professor at the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Chapman University School of Pharmacy. He is also Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Department of Pharmacology, and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UC San Diego. Dr. Verkhivker received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Moscow State University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in computational biophysics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In his industrial career, Dr. Verkhivker played a leading role in establishing one of the first structure-based drug design technology platforms and building the largest computational group in the pharmaceutical industry at Agouron Pharmaceuticals and Pfizer. He has been Director of Structural Bioinformatics and Structure-Based Drug Design at Pfizer Global Research and Development, La Jolla Laboratories. Dr. Verkhivker has led computational biology and structure-based drug design groups at Pfizer in discovering the first FDA-approved personalized cancer agent Xalkori. Since 2002, he has been Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UC San Diego. In 2006 he joined the School of Pharmacy and Center for Bioinformatics at The University of Kansas as a Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Bioinformatics. In 2011 Dr. Verkhivker assumed position of Full Professor of Computational Biosciences at Schmid College of Science & Technology and Professor of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Chapman University School of Pharmacy in Irvine, CA. He is a founding member of the Structural Biology Center at the Chapman University School of Pharmacy and member of Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center , University of California Irvine. Dr. Verkhivker authored more than 250 peer reviewed publications and is recognized for his research contributions in the fields of bioinformatics, computational biophysics, computational biology and drug discovery. His most recent research activities are in the areas of computational systems biology, translational bioinformatics, network science and artificial intelligence with the focus on application of these approaches in translational cancer research. His research groups are involved in multidisciplinary studies that combine structural and computational biology with machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to dissect molecular mechanisms and develop novel strategies for discovery of allosteric modulators of therapeutically important families of protein kinases and molecular chaperones. The innovative computational approaches developed by Prof. Verkhivker and his group allow for rational engineering of novel functions and design of selective kinase inhibitors. He is an Associated Editor of Plos ONE, International Journal of Molecular Sciences and Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences, and a member of Advisory Boards of several biotech companies.