Ryan L. Hayes

Biography

Ryan L. Hayes, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Hayes received his Ph.D. in Physics from Rice University in 2015, working with José N. Onuchic, and completed postdoctoral training and served as Assistant Research Scientist with Charles L. Brooks III at the University of Michigan from 2015 to 2022. His research focuses on developing and applying computational methods for protein design and drug discovery, particularly through lambda dynamics free energy calculations.

Hayes has made contributions to the development of multisite lambda dynamics (MSλD) as a protein design method, reducing solvation free energy errors from 3 kcal/mol to 0.6 kcal/mol and demonstrating accuracy for up to 15 simultaneous mutations in collaboration with the Marqusee lab. He developed BLaDE, a GPU-accelerated molecular dynamics engine that outperforms existing MSλD engines by factors of five to eight. His work has expanded the scope of alchemical free energy methods to explore large combinatorial chemical spaces for applications in protein engineering and computer-aided drug design.

Hayes is a developer of the CHARMM molecular simulation software and has contributed to the CHARMM developers community since 2020. He has authored 32 peer-reviewed publications and delivered over 30 talks at conferences and invited seminars. His work spans computational modeling of RNA-ion interactions, development of coarse-grained models for biomolecular folding, and methods for predicting protein stability and ligand binding affinities.

Education

• B.S. in Physics, Point Loma Nazarene University, 2007
• B.S. in Music, Point Loma Nazarene University, 2007
• M.S. in Physics, University of California, San Diego, 2009
• Ph.D. in Physics, Rice University, 2015

Distinctions

• Baylor University Research Experience for Undergraduates Most Prolific Researcher Award, 2006