Therapeutic Sciences Graduate Program

The Rubenstein Group leverages the tools of physics and computation to study biomolecular dynamics, assembly and evolution. Recently, our group has developed new ML methods that accelerate the prediction of novel, druggable conformations of different proteins, including cancer-causing kinases, and new quantum computing techniques that can improve the prediction of protein dynamics and drug-binding. I am also deeply engaged in developing novel computing architectures and developing new quantum algorithms. While the focus of my work is on developing new electronic structure methods, I am also deeply engaged in rethinking computing architectures and computational biophysics. I am deeply committed to educational equity, research mentoring, teaching, equity, and outreach efforts. I received my Sc.B.s in Chemical Physics and Applied Mathematics at Brown University, my M.Phil. in Computational Chemistry while a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and my Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at Columbia University. Prior to being appointed as a professor at Brown, I was a Lawrence Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Throughout my life, I have been an advocate of educational equity and diversity. As a kid, I grew up in a working/lower middle class suburb of New York City with no emphasis on education and negligibly few with college degrees. I am here at Brown because of luck and the dedication of a few exceptional teachers who took a few moments to suggest some risky, but potentially life-transforming paths. I strongly believe in paying the confidence they put in me back to others. In my spare time, I am avid outdoors woman and athlete. I am proud of my encyclopedic knowledge of basketball and rap. I can usually be found reading some paper about something that hasn’t become a reality yet, or singing Greatest Hits from the Cars at the suggestion of my son Orion.

Dr. Rubenstein was named to Popular Science magazine’s 2021 Brilliant 10 list of the top early career scientists and C&EN’s 2019 Talented 12 list of early career chemists, and has received a number of research and teaching honors including the Fulbright Scholarship, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, Cottrell Teacher-Scholar Award, and Sloan Research Fellowship.