Douglas J. Cork, Ph.D.
Professor of Biology
BCPS/ Biology Division
Office: 394 Life Sciences Building
Office Hours:
Phone: 312.567.3492
Fax: 312.567.3494
Email:
cork@iit.edu
Web:
Cork's Web page
Expertise
- Computational Bioinformatics, Bench driven work on Salmonella, E.coli, Chlorobium, SRB’s and Bacillus, Pseudomonas
Education
- B.S. University of Arizona
- Ph.D. University of Arizona
Curriculum Vitae
Research & Major Accomplishments
At this point we have a working comparison tool but need to validate it for clinical use. This includes adapting the existing methods for quickly locating sequences on the genome, building a library of Env & Pol features for comparison, and validating the matching process against known clinical outcomes. At least part of this will involve tuning the comparison algorithm to produce values appropriate for creating "clinical" (vs. evolutionary) trees and clades. The final outcome of our effort should be tools for building a library of known features, comparing sequences to them, and producing clinically useful results.
So far, we have successfully developed heuristics for defining distances and gaps between similar W-curves of HIV-1 genomes. We would like to correlate changes in the W-curve of HIV-1 genomes with clinical changes seen in HIV-1 cohort trials.
Current Projects
- Military HIV-1 Research Project/Henry Jackson Foundation
Awards/Honors
- Baird Scholar
- Editorial Board Member: Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, Applied Bioinformatics, Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology
Patents
- Sulfate to Sulfure from Gypsum by microbial mutualism
- Lost patent for Banvel degrading Soybeans from herbicide degrading Pseudomonas strains: pending court
