Please visit our new web page here.

There are still some useful links on this web page, which I'm in the process of moving.

Donald Lab Alumni

Bruce Randall Donald
Professor
Email

OK, what may be evident from these webpages is that I'm quite in love with this work! Science is fun! Always working with young people from all over the world is stimulating and enjoyable! Well, I have always felt very very lucky to have a lab of my own, and have done my very best to help my postdocs and students achieve that goal too. As much as I enjoy and derive satisfaction from the science, I've been gratified to see how the many alumni of the lab have achieved spectacular success on their own. Former graduate students and postdocs for my lab are now in tenured or tenure-track faculty positions at MIT, CMU, U. Of Washington, U.B.C, U. Toronto, and other great universities. Others are leading research at national labs or in industry. See the lab alumni section below!

PhD Students

• Current Students

• Former Doctoral Students (PhD Advisor)

  1. Craig McGray, PhD, 2005.
     Dissertation: Design, Fabrication, Control, and Programming of MEMS Micro-Robots.
     Now a researcher at the MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) Project, Semiconductor Electronics Division, Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory, NIST.
     More on Craig's research.
  2. Ryan Lilien, PhD 2004, MD 2006.
     Dissertation: "Novel Algorithms for Structural Molecular Biology and Proteomics"
     Now jointly at Dartmouth Medical School, and also a Postdoc at Dartmouth.
     Starting fall 2006, Ryan will be an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto with a joint appointment between Computer Science and the UT Medical School.
     
     Some of Ryan's papers.
  3. Chris Langmead, PhD 2003.
     Now an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU).
     Dissertation: "Molecular Replacement for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: Application to NMR Resonance Assignment and Protein Structure Determination."
     
     Some of Chris' papers.
  4. Karl-F. Böhringer, PhD 1998.
     Now an Associate Professor (with tenure) of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, in Seattle, and director of the UW MEMS Lab.
     Dissertation: "Programmable Force Fields for Distributed Manipulation, and their Implementation Using Micro-fabricated Actuator Arrays."
     Karl's thesis was nominated for the ACM Distinguished Dissertation Award.
     (Karl's Papers and Thesis).
  5. Jim Jennings, PhD 1997.
     First post-PhD job: Assistant Professor at Tulane. Currently at IBM.
  
  Dissertation: "Distributed Manipulation for Mobile Robots."
  Jim's papers and thesis.
  
  6. Russell Brown, PhD 1995.
     First post-PhD job: Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories.
     Dissertation: "Localization, Mapmaking, and Distributed Manipulation with Flexible, Robust Mobile Robots."
     (His Papers and Thesis).
     
  7. Amy Briggs, PhD 1994.
     Now an Associate Professor (with tenure) and Chair of Computer Science at Middlebury.
     Dissertation: "Efficient Geometric Algorithms for Robot Sensing and Control."
     (Her Papers and Thesis).
     
  8. Patrick Xavier, PhD 1992.
     Now a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories.
  
  Dissertation: "Provably-Good Approximation Algorithms for Optimal Kinodynamic Robot Plans."
  Pat's thesis was nominated for the ACM Distinguished Dissertation Award.
  Kinodynamic Motion Planning.

Donald Lab PostDocs

• Current PostDocs

• Former PostDocs

  1. Rahul Ray (2004-2006).
     Now an Assistant Professor at IIT-Madras.
     
     Research in Computational Biology and Chemistry.
     
  2. Ram Mettu (2002-2005).
     Now an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
     
     Research in Computational Biology and Chemistry.
     Some of Ram's papers.
  3. Chris Bailey-Kellogg, (1999-2001)
     First job: Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University.
     Currently a Professor at Dartmouth.
     Research in Computational Biology and Chemistry.
     Some of Chris' papers.
  4. Jack Kelley, (1999-2001)
     Now at the University of Michigan.
     Research in Computational Biology and Chemistry.
     Some of Jack's papers.
  5. Daniela Rus, (1992-94)
     Now Professor of Computer Science at MIT (EECS Department).
     

     September 22, 2002: Prof. Daniela Rus is named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow!

     (Some of Daniela's papers).
  6. Jonathan Rees, (1991-92)
     Currently lead scientist at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and MIT, working on the protein pathways database project.
     
  Program Mobile Robots in Scheme!
  Some of Jonathan's papers.
  7. Dinesh Pai, (1988-91)
     First job: Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UBC.
     Now Professor of Computer Science at UBC and Rutgers.
     Dinesh's research in three areas of computational robotics:
     architectures for robot locomotion on rough terrain, simulation of physical systems in virtual environments, and assembly systems verification.

Selected MS Students

Haoning Fu, M.S.2004.
Thesis: An Algorithm For Determining Backbone Structures of Protein Turns and Loops Using Multiple Residual Dipolar Couplings in Two Media
Haoning is now a senior scientist at Medical Media Systems, NH.

Undergraduates

• Current undergrads

• Former undergrads:
  1. Tim Danford '01
     Senior Thesis, "Cleavage-Based Algorithms for Experiment Planning and Data Analysis in Stable Isotope Assisted Structural Mass Spectrometry."
     Currently a Ph.D. Student in EECS at MIT.
  2. Alik Widge '99
     Senior Honors thesis, "A Method for Automatic Determination of Protein Secondary Structure from Sparse Unassigned NMR Data."
     Winner, John G. Kemeny Computing Prize (First Prize).
  
  Currently an M.D.-Ph.D. Candidate at Carnegie Mellon University/University of Pittsburgh.
  3. Ryan McCullough '99
  
  Currently a Ph.D. Student in EECS at MIT.
  4. Mona Sridharan
  
  Currently a Ph.D. Student in Molecular Biology and Biophysics at UCSF.
  5. Susanna Leng '98
     Senior Honors thesis: "Data-Directed Conformational Search: Using Global Optimization to Determine Large Protein Structure from Sparse NMR Data."
  6. Nikolay Stoyanov,
     Dartmouth, B.S. 1998 (Chemistry).
  
  Currently a Ph.D. Student in Chemistry at MIT.
  • Cornell veterans.

Visitors

• Current Visitors

• Former visitors:
  • Amy Briggs (1998)
  • Tae-Cheon Yang, Kyungsung University, Korea (2002-4)