Bruce Randall Donald (born 1958) is an American
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
and
computational biologist. He is the
James B. Duke Professor of
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
and
Biochemistry
Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...
at
Duke University
Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
. He has made numerous contributions to several fields in
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
such as
robotics
Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots.
Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...
,
Microelectromechanical Systems
MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) is the technology of microscopic devices incorporating both electronic and moving parts. MEMS are made up of components between 1 and 100 micrometres in size (i.e., 0.001 to 0.1 mm), and MEMS devices ...
(MEMS), Geometric & physical algorithms and
computational geometry, as well as in areas of Structural Molecular Biology &
Biochemistry
Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...
such as
Protein design
Protein design is the rational design of new protein molecules to design novel activity, behavior, or purpose, and to advance basic understanding of protein function. Proteins can be designed from scratch (''de novo'' design) or by making calcul ...
, Protein Structure Determination and
Computational Chemistry
Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses computer simulations to assist in solving chemical problems. It uses methods of theoretical chemistry incorporated into computer programs to calculate the structures and properties of mol ...
.
Life and career
Donald received a
B.A.
A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...
summa cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...
in Russian Language and Literature from
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
in 1980. After working at the
Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis in the
Graduate School of Design at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, he then attended
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
EECS, where he received his
S.M. in EECS (1984) and
Ph.D. in Computer Science (1987) under the supervision of professor
Tomás Lozano-Pérez in the
MIT AI Lab
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...
(Artificial Intelligence Laboratory). He joined the Cornell University Department of Computer Science as an assistant professor in 1987.
At Cornell, Donald received tenure in 1993, and served as associate professor of computer science at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
until 1998. While on sabbatical at
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
(1994-1996), he worked at
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American businessman, computer programmer, and investor. He co-founded Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which was followed by the ...
's research & development and technology incubator
Interval Research Corporation
Interval Research Corporation was founded in 1992 by Paul Allen and David Liddle. It was a Palo Alto laboratory and technology incubator focusing on consumer product applications and services with a focus on the Internet.
A 1997 version of the ...
(1995-1997), where he and
Tom Ngo co-invented
Embedded Constraint Graphics.
After moving to Dartmouth, Donald was the Joan P. and Edward J. Foley Jr 1933 Professor of Computer Science,
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
until 2006 when he moved to
Duke University
Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
. Currently Donald is the
James B. Duke Professor of Computer Science, Chemistry, and Biochemistry, in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University and in the School of Medicine,
Duke University Medical Center
Duke University Hospital is a 1062
-bed acute care facility and an academic tertiary care facility located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Established in 1930, it is the flagship teaching hospital for the Duke University Health Sy ...
. Donald was appointed William and Sue Gross Professor from 2006 to 2012, and was named
James B. Duke Professor in 2012.
He is a
fellow
A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...
of the
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...
(ACM) and a
fellow
A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...
of the
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines.
The IEEE ...
. Previously, he was a
Guggenheim Fellow
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated d ...
(2001–2002) and received a National Science Foundation
Presidential Young Investigator Award
The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Preside ...
(1989–1994). In 2015, Donald was elected a
fellow
A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...
of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), for contributions to
computational molecular biology.
Work
Donald's early research was in the field of robotic motion planning and distributed manipulation. Later he has made numerous contributions to MEMS and Micro-robotics, and designed MEMS micro-robots with dimensions of 60 μm by 250 μm by 10 μm.
Recently, he has conducted research in the areas of Structural Molecular Biology; chiefly, Protein Design and Protein Structure Determination from
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which atomic nucleus, nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are disturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near and far field, near field) and respond by producing ...
data. He has developed numerous
algorithms
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for per ...
for
protein design
Protein design is the rational design of new protein molecules to design novel activity, behavior, or purpose, and to advance basic understanding of protein function. Proteins can be designed from scratch (''de novo'' design) or by making calcul ...
which have been successfully tested experimentally in the wet lab.
The protein design algorithms attempt to incorporate additional molecular flexibility into the design process by using ensembles and continuously flexible rotamers and backbones. Donald has also developed algorithms for determining the structures of biomedically significant proteins. For example, his subgroup algorithm CRANS (Acta Crystallogr. D 2004; J. Biol. Chem. 2003), which identifies cross-rotation peaks consistent with non-crystallographic symmetry, was used in the structure determination of the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase-thymidylate synthase (DHFR-TS) from
Cryptosporidium hominis
''Cryptosporidium hominis'', along with '' Cryptosporidium parvum'', is among the medically important ''Cryptosporidium'' species. It is an obligate parasite of humans that can colonize the gastrointestinal tract resulting in the gastroenteriti ...
, an important advancement in Cryptosporidium biology. He has designed many algorithms and computational protocols to extract structural information from NMR data, and used that information to compute structures of globular proteins and symmetric homo-oligomers. A distinct feature of his algorithms is that they use less data, and provide complexity-theoretic guarantees on time and space (See, e.g., B. R. Donald and J. Martin. "Automated NMR Assignment and Protein Structure Determination using Sparse Dipolar Coupling Constraints."
Progress in NMR Spectroscopy 2009; 55(2):101-127). Donald is the author o
Algorithms in Structural Molecular Biology a textbook published by MIT Press (2011).
Students
Donald has supervised many students and postdocs, many of whom are now professors in reputed universities such as
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
,
Carnegie-Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a Private university, private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became t ...
,
University of Washington, Seattle
The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Unite ...
,
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) is a public land-grant research university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system and was founded in 1863 as the ...
,
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
,
Duke University
Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
,
Middlebury College
Middlebury College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont, United States. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalism in the United States, Congregationalists, Middlebury w ...
and
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...
, and researchers at organizations such as
NIAID,
NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...
,
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
,
Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force B ...
.
Personal life
Donald is the son of historian
David Herbert Donald
David Herbert Donald (October 1, 1920 – May 17, 2009) was an American historian, best known for his 1995 biography of Abraham Lincoln. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, for books about Thomas Wolfe and Charles Sumner; he published ...
and historian and editor
Aida DiPace Donald.
"David Herbert Donald, Writer on Lincoln, Dies at 88"
/ref>
See also
* MEMS
MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) is the technology of microscopic devices incorporating both electronic and moving parts. MEMS are made up of components between 1 and 100 micrometres in size (i.e., 0.001 to 0.1 mm), and MEMS devices ...
* Protein design
Protein design is the rational design of new protein molecules to design novel activity, behavior, or purpose, and to advance basic understanding of protein function. Proteins can be designed from scratch (''de novo'' design) or by making calcul ...
* NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which atomic nucleus, nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are disturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near and far field, near field) and respond by producing ...
* Protein Structure
Protein structure is the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in an amino acid-chain molecule. Proteins are polymers specifically polypeptides formed from sequences of amino acids, which are the monomers of the polymer. A single amino acid ...
* Kinodynamic planning In robotics and motion planning, kinodynamic planning is a class of problems for which velocity, acceleration, and force/torque bounds must be satisfied, together with kinematic constraints such as avoiding obstacles. The term was coined by Bruce ...
Publications
Donald is the author of over 100 publications. A representative selection includes:
Kinodynamic Motion Planning
Bruce Randall Donald, Patrick G. Xavier, John F. Canny, John H. Reif. J. ACM 40(5): 1048-1066 (1993).
Phylogenetic classification of protozoa based on the structure of the linker domain in the bifunctional enzyme, dihydrofolate reductase-thymidylate synthase
Robert H. O'Neil, Ryan H. Lilien, Bruce R. Donald, Robert M. Stroud and Amy C. Anderson. J Biol Chem 2003. 278(52):52980-7.
*
*
*
*
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References
External links
Bruce Donald's homepage
Bruce Donald's Research
ACM Fellows Award: Bruce Donald
MEDLINE: Bruce Donald
{{DEFAULTSORT:Donald, Bruce
1958 births
Living people
American computer scientists
Duke University faculty
Yale University alumni
MIT School of Engineering alumni
2009 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Cornell University faculty
American computational chemists
Place of birth missing (living people)