B.S. in Biomedical Engineering, Boston University (2020)
Shuwen (Eric) Lei is a Graduate Research Assistant in the Goddard Group at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he develops computational approaches for biomolecular engineering and therapeutic discovery. His research spans machine learning, molecular modeling, protein engineering, and nucleic acid design. Eric has developed nucleic acid design algorithms, including tBond-L and tBond-G, for optimizing Cas13b gRNAs and LNAs for cardiovascular disease applications. His designs achieved over 30% stronger binding than commercial standards, with the underlying software patented and the work published in Science. He has also engineered the SRP43 protein for Aβ42 binding using ensemble docking, achieving a 50% reduction in Ki against Alzheimer’s disease targets and establishing an MPNN-based protein screening pipeline. In addition, he designed an EGCG–polypeptide hybrid therapeutic that achieved complete inhibition of Aβ42 fibrillization in vitro. And finally, he has led the drug repurposing effort on rare disease targets such as EWS-FLI1 in the group. His work focuses on combining computational modeling and machine learning with experimental biomolecular engineering to accelerate the development of next-generation therapeutics.