Now that I’m about halfway through my tme here at Rice, I’ve started to wrap up some of the changes I’ve been working on and start switching gears. This was a short week for me, given the holiday and some travel delays, but I was able to look into how flexible residues of the receptor are fixed, which is framed as a constraint satifaction problem. I spent a really long time looking through PDB files to understand the changes that are being made and how the current code is working, and while I feel like I have a better sense of how it’s working, I’ve been struggling to find a way to improve the efficiency. I hope that within the next few days I’ll be able to find something promising.

With only about a month left, my mind has been shifting towards going back home and starting school. It’ll be sad to leave the lab and the friends I’ve made here, but it will definately be nice to escape the brutal Texas heat once I head back North. I’m looking forward to seeing my school friends and getting to share my amazing experiences here this summer!