Faculty Profile
James M. Briggs
Professor and NSM Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs
Department of Biology and Biochemistry
Office: Houston Science Center, 402D and Science & Research 1, 214
Contact: jbriggs@uh.edu - (713) 743-8366
Education: Ph.D., Purdue University, B.S., University of Texas, El Paso
Dr. James Briggs’ research is focused in the highly interdisciplinary and collaborative area of computational chemistry/biochemistry. He develops and applies computational methods to problems of chemical and biochemical interest. His research falls into two general categories: computer-aided inhibitor design/discovery and computational biophysics. Briggs’ main target areas in the inhibitor/ligand area are: Rho kinase 1 (heart disease), PTEN (cancer), PTEN/5HTC2C (addiction control), BCL2 (cancer), gluconeogenesis and glucose uptake (cancer); those for the computational biophysics area include cholera toxin, biofilm control, RNA structure prediction, protein electrostatics and pKa predictions, and identification of protein/enzyme function from structure only.
Organizations, Outreach, Boards, Memberships:
Faculty Senate, University of Houston, 2019–present
Member, Intellectual Property Committee, University of Houston 2016–present
Editorial Advisory Board, Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling 2009–present
Associate Editor, PLoS Computational Biology 2008–present