Cade Duckworth | People | Beckstein Lab

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Cade Duckworth

Cade Duckworth

Cade Duckworth is an undergraduate student at ASU Online completing a concurrent degree program in Biochemistry (Medicinal Chemistry) and Neuroscience, with a graduation date of May 2023. Cade plans to begin grad school in the Fall of 2023 in pursuit of a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry or Biophysics. He joined the lab in April 2022, and is doing a remote research project.

The aim of Cade’s project is to develop a workflow to automatically analyze conformational flexibility in small molecules by analyzing large datasets from alchemical free energy perturbation (FEP) simulations with our MDPOW software. Current testing uses SAMPL7 physical properties challenge datasets for assessing accuracy of automatically sampling and analyzing the whole conformational space. He hopes to extend this workflow to automatically obtain additional observables, and test for accuracy and convergence. During the Spring 2023 semester Cade will be investigating methods for classifying results from the physical properties analyses to identify features associated with insufficient sampling.

Cade also participated in research with two groups for the Fall 2022 semester as part of the Online Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (OURS):

  • His work with Dr. Gene Brewer’s group in the Memory and Attention Control Lab focused on learning concepts for programming behavioral tasks for participants with Python, and data collection, management, and analysis with RStudio.
  • His work in the Genomics Research Experience with Dr. Melissa Wilson focused on ‘-sex differences in gene expression and how changing different bioinformatics parameters can affect results and interpretations.’

For the Spring 2023 semester Cade’s work with Dr. Wilson in the Genomics Research Experience will continue during his participation in the Sex Chromosome Lab.

Cade’s research interests broadly include biophysics, computer-aided drug design, molecular pharmacology, and neurogenetics/genomics.
Outside of school and research he enjoys outdoor activities, reading, and rescuing more animals than he can fit in his home.

Honors and Awards

Research Presentations, Conferences

  • Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium (Rice GCURS 2022), Houston, TX: ‘Automated Analysis of Conformational Flexibility in Small Molecules Using SAMPL7 Physical Properties Challenge Datasets from Alchemical Free Energy Simulations with MDPOW, Theory/Computational Chemistry Section
  • American Physical Society Four Corners Section Fall Meeting (APS-4CS 2022), Albuquerque, NM: ‘Automated Analysis of Conformational Flexibility in Small Molecules Using SAMPL7 Physical Properties Challenge Datasets from Alchemical Free Energy Simulations with MDPOW, Biophysics and Soft Condensed Matter Section (Full Travel Award)

He can be found on LinkedIn and GitHub