It is with a mixture of sadness and pride that the Olson Lab and FightAIDS@Home bid a fond farewell to Dr. Alex L. Perryman, who is leaving us to move to the next rung on his professional development ladder. Alex will be joining Joel Freundlich's lab in the Department of Medicine at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School as a Research Teaching Specialist III. In that position he will be working on tuberculosis research in the Center for Emerging and Re-emerging Pathogens. He also will devote some of his time to analyzing and extending the GO Fight Against Malaria data and, hopefully, developing the second phase of his GO FAM malaria drug discovery project.

Dr. Perryman has been a highly valued member of our laboratory, and a pivotal member of the FightAIDS@Home team. His early computational work on HIV protease pointed to the possibility of targeting new sites on the enzyme that could synergize with the existing active site inhibitors (and FDA approved drugs), to forestall the development of drug resistance in HIV infected individuals undergoing drug therapy. His insights have spearheaded a significant effort in our new NIH funded HIVE (HIV Interactions in Viral Evolution) Center, which depends upon the computations done on FightAIDS@Home.

In addition, under his own initiative Dr. Perryman started and conducted computational research on Malaria Drug development, for which he established the Global Online Fight Against Malaria (GO FAM) Project on IBM's World Community Grid. This project has resulted in 1.16 billion computational screening results against 22 classes of drug targets for malaria – some of which are shared targets against tuberculosis – both devastating scourges prevalent in the Third World.

Beyond his stellar contributions to the science of our laboratory and the advancement of our understanding of HIV drug resistance, Dr. Perryman has been a strong advocate and prolific contributor and spokesman for World Community Grid. Alex’s Forum updates, FAAH newsletters, webinars, and videos have kept the community of volunteers informed and engaged. His writings and presentations have been clear, comprehensive and understandable to a broad audience.

Dr. Perryman will be sorely missed by the Olson Laboratory, but we are confident in his continued success and accomplishments in his new post. We will keep close contact and anticipate continued collaborations with him in the future.

Many of you are aware that taking Dr. Perryman’s place in our research group and in our FightAIDS@Home Project is Dr. Daniel Santiago. Dr. Santiago comes to Scripps after receiving a Masters Degree in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and a Ph.D. in Computational and Medicinal Chemistry from the University of South Florida. Prior to that, Dr. Santiago had received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics and had taught mathematics for 10 years. His training and experience in both science and in science communication make him an ideal person to take over Dr. Perryman’s role in World Community Grid and FightAIDS@Home.

Fortunately Daniel and Alex have overlapped in the laboratory for the past several months, and thus Daniel has already assumed the major functions of our FightAIDS@Home Project and has become a valuable scientist in the activities of the HIVE Center. While personnel changes, we anticipate new research and great progress with Dr. Santiago taking on the project.

He, Alex, and I wish to express our deep appreciation to World Community Grid Volunteers for their valuable and continued support into the future. Together we can make a difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Art Olson
Professor, Dept. of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology
The Scripps Research Institute