Marta Filizola, PhD

Dr. Filizola holds the Sharon & Frederick A. Klingenstein-Nathan G. Kase, MD Professorship and is the Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS). She is a dedicated leader in computational biophysics of membrane proteins, with over 25 years of experience applying methods of computational and theoretical chemistry to biochemical and biomedical problems, as well as to rational drug design. A native of Italy, Dr. Filizola received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Chemistry from the University Federico II in Naples. She earned her PhD in Computational Chemistry from the Second University of Naples, conducting most of her doctoral studies at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. She went on to complete postdoctoral training in Computational Biophysics at the Molecular Research Institute in California. Dr. Filizola is the author of several patents and over 135 peer-reviewed publications in the field of computational biophysics. Currently, she is a tenured Full Professor in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences, the Department of Neuroscience, and the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health. In her role of GSBS Dean (since 2016), Dr. Filizola participates in all school-wide decisions and strategic planning related to graduate education and postdoctoral training. Specifically, she oversees two PhD programs (Biomedical Sciences and Neuroscience), one MD/PhD program (jointly with the Dean of Medical Education), three Master’s programs in biomedical sciences, and various non-degree pipeline programs, all while maintaining the highest academic and ethical standards for the faculty and trainees.

Dr. Filizola’s research program primarily focuses on gaining rigorous mechanistic insights into the structure, dynamics, and function of important classes of membrane proteins and prominent drug targets, including G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs), transporters, channels, and beta3 integrins, for the purpose of drug discovery. To achieve these goals, Dr. Filizola's lab employs a variety of computational structural biology tools and rational drug design approaches, ranging from molecular modeling, bioinformatics, and cheminformatics, to molecular dynamics simulations, metadynamics, free-energy perturbations, and artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques. Dr. Filizola’s computational methodologies are closely intertwined with collaborative experimental investigations to provide new and biologically relevant insights into signal transduction processes triggered by molecular recognition, giving rise to new hypotheses to guide further experimental inquiry. A special effort in Dr. Filizola's lab has been devoted to the subfamily of opioid receptors to discover/design novel painkillers with reduced abuse liability and other adverse effects, as well as to beta3 integrins towards the discovery of noveltherapeutics to treat renal, hematologic, neoplastic, bone, and/or fibrotic diseases. For more information, please visit the Filizola Laboratory website.