Dr. Irina Kufareva

Biography

Irina Kufareva is a Professor in Residence at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego. Her research focuses on elucidating the structural and molecular principles governing tumor immune cell responses to drugs and stimuli, using computational approaches. She emphasizes the significance of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and G proteins in cell signaling, developing accurate computational methods to predict transient interactions between proteins and ligands. Noteworthy collaborations in her career include elucidating the structural basis of ligand binding for chemokine GPCRs involved in cancer progression and HIV co-receptor dynamics. With an educational background comprising an M.S. in Mathematics Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Computer Science, both from Tomsk State University, Russia, she has made substantial contributions to computational structural biology, particularly in modeling GPCR signaling mechanisms. She has also served as an invited lecturer at several prestigious meetings and held key leadership roles such as the Associate Founding Director of the UC San Diego Center for Network Medicine. Her dedication is reflected in her development of the Pocketome, an encyclopedia of binding sites for small molecules and peptides.

Research Interests