Jeffrey J. Gray PhD

Jeffrey Gray, a Johns Hopkins University Provost’s Discovery Award recipient, is the creator of a pioneering computer code architecture used by thousands of biomedical researchers worldwide to predict and design protein structures. The computational tools he and his lab, GrayLab, develop are furthering capabilities to resolve disease and immunity, including cell signaling, DNA regulation, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV, and cancer. He is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Gray is the original developer of RosettaDock, a multi-scale algorithm and leading tool for the prediction of the structure of protein complexes from their constituent proteins. Protein docking is critical for deciphering molecular mechanisms. Gray’s team pioneered key methods in exploring diverse conformations, evaluating candidate structures, and deploying advanced optimization algorithms on supercomputing facilities to enable consistent and accurate results.

GrayLab also developed extensive tools for antibody engineering. Central to adaptive immune system function, antibodies comprise one-third of the pharmaceuticals in development and are critical biotechnological molecules for reagents, tags, and sensors. His team has predicted antibody structures and antibody-antigen complex structures identified the origin of specificity and mechanisms of antibody evolution and created tools for the design of robust biologics for use as pharmaceuticals.

Gray, who is affiliated with Hopkins’ Program in Molecular Biophysics, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, and Institute for NanoBioTechnology, has garnered numerous awards for his research. Selected honors include a National Institutes of Health (NIH) K01 Mentored Quantitative Research Fellowship in Genomics, NSF Career Award, and a Beckman Young Investigator Award. In 2016, Gray was named to the College of Fellows, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and won the David Himmelblau Award for Innovations in Computer-Based Chemical Engineering Education. At Johns Hopkins, he has been recognized with the F. Stuart Hodgson Faculty Scholar, the Provost’s Discovery Award, and the Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award honors.

He received his BSE in Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, completing post-doctoral training researching protein-protein docking at the University of Washington.