Wesleyan portrait of Kelly M. Thayer

Kelly M. Thayer

Associate Professor of the Practice in Integrative Sciences

200 Church Street, HA66
860-685-3213

kthayer@wesleyan.edu

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BA Regis College
PHD Wesleyan University

Kelly M. Thayer

Professor Thayer’s research interest is computational molecular biophysics applied to understanding biological molecules.  Recently her lab has developed two new techniques for studying signaling in proteins: Molecular Dynamics based Markov State Models and Molecular Dynamics based sector analysis and machine learning/AI.  Taken together, the methods identify the important residues in a molecule, and describe the energetic landscape of the system.  This information is being used to develop new therapeutic drugs for cancer working to target key residues in the molecule to restore native functionality to p53, a key protein implicated in human cancer. The methods hold promise to create new medicines for currently incurable diseases by virtue of tackling the problem from this new perspective.

Prof. Thayer received her Bachelor’s Degree from Regis College just outside of Boston, MA in 1999. She then completed her Ph.D. at Wesleyan University in computational chemistry in 2004. Subsequently she continued learning computational techniques in a series of postdocs at Northwestern University, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  She held faculty positions at Vassar College, Assumption College, and Skidmore prior to joining the faculty at Wesleyan in 2016.

Academic Affiliations

Office Hours

Regular Office Hours

W 8:00AM-10:00AM HA 37 / HA 66 (research lab) or request an appointment

 

Courses

Spring 2024
COMP 112 - 01
Introduction to Programming

COMP 112 - 02
Introduction to Programming

COMP 112 - 03
Introduction to Programming

COMP 360G - 01
Scientific Computing

QAC 154 - 01
Working with MATLAB

Fall 2024
COMP 112 - 01
Introduction to Programming

COMP 112 - 02
Introduction to Programming

COMP 112 - 03
Introduction to Programming

QAC 159 - 01
Working with HPC Tools