BSc, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, 1988. ARCS, Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, 1988. Wellcome Prize PhD in Molecular Biophysics. Thesis Title: Structural Studies of the Lipocalin Protein Family. University of Leeds, 1992. Chartered Chemist, Royal Society of Chemistry, 1995. Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005.

Archilochos (?ρχ?λοχο?) (c680-645 BC), the ancient greek poet famously said: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Though not remotely vulpine, I am nonetheless a Fox by this definition. I have many research interests, many more than my track-record can attest. I see Aston as the place to develop these interests and discover many more. More specifically, my initial research objectives lie at the intersection of drug design and immunology. My greatest accomplishments lie in the field of Immunoinformatics, and thus many of my goals lie in that area: in silico, in vitro, and in vivo discovery of novel small-molecule adjuvants; epitope identification leveraging a range of techniques; and also the discovery of novel whole protein antigens as candidate vaccines. At the same time, I also anticipate developing research in other including bioinformatics, cheminformatics, and the molecular dynamic simulation of semi-stochastic systems.

Sheikh, QM, Gatherer, D, Reche, PA & Flower, DR 2016, 'Towards the knowledge-based design of universal influenza epitope ensemble vaccines' Bioinformatics, vol. Early online,10.1093/bioinformatics/btw399 Audain, E, Ramos, Y, Hermjakob, H, Flower, DR & Perez-Riverol, Y 2016, 'Accurate estimation of isoelectric point of protein and peptide based on amino acid sequences' Bioinformatics, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 821-827,10.1093/bioinformatics/btv674 Pappalardo, F, Flower, D, Russo, G, Pennisi, M & Motta, S 2015, 'Computational modelling approaches to vaccinology' Pharmacological Research, vol. 92, pp. 40-45,10.1016/j.phrs.2014.08.006 Bunkute, E, Cummins, C, Crofts, F, Bunce, G, Nabney, IT & Flower, DR 2015, 'PIP-DB: the protein isoelectric point database' Bioinformatics, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 295-296,10.1093/bioinformatics/btu637 Chattopadhyay, AK, Nasiev, D & Flower, DR 2015, 'A statistical physics perspective on alignment-independent protein sequence comparison.' Bioinformatics, vol. 31, no. 15, pp. 2469-2474,10.1093/bioinformatics/btv167 Molero-Abraham, M, Glutting, J-P, Flower, DR, Lafuente, EM & Reche, PA 2015, 'EPIPOX: immunoinformatic characterization of the shared T-cell epitome between variola virus and related pathogenic orthopoxviruses' Journal of Immunology Research, vol. 2015, 738020,10.1155/2015/738020 Reche, P, Flower, DR, Fridkis-Hareli, M & Hoshino, Y 2015, 'Peptide-based immunotherapeutics and vaccines 2015' Journal of Immunology Research, vol. 2015, 349049,10.1155/2015/349049 Dimitrov, I, Bangov, I, Flower, DR & Doytchinova, I 2014, 'AllerTOP v.2 - a server for in silico prediction of allergens' Journal of Molecular Modeling, vol. 20, no. 6, 2278,10.1007/s00894-014-2278-5 Reche, PA, Fernandez-Caldas, E, Flower, DR, Fridkis-Hareli, M & Hoshino, Y 2014, 'Peptide-based immunotherapeutics and vaccines' Journal of Immunology Research, vol. 2014, 256784,10.1155/2014/256784 Patronov, A, Salamanova, E, Dimitrov, I, Flower, DR & Doytchinova, I 2014, 'Histidine hydrogen bonding in MHC at pH 5 and pH 7 modeled by molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations' Current Computer-Aided Drug design, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 41-49,10.2174/15734099113096660050 Mumtaz, S, Flower, DR & Nabney, I 2014, 'Multi-level visualisation using Gaussian process latent variable models' . in RS Laramee, A Kerren & J Braz (eds),IVAPP 2014: proceedings of the 5th international conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications.SciTePress, Lisbon (PT), pp. 122-129, 5th international conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications, Lisbon, Portugal, 5-8 January. Molero-Abraham, M, Lafuente, EM, Flower, DR & Reche, PA 2013, 'Selection of conserved epitopes from hepatitis C virus for pan-populational stimulation of T-cell responses' Clinical and Developmental Immunology, vol. 2013, 601943,10.1155/2013/601943 Flower, DR 2013, 'The immune system as drug target' Immunology and Immunogenetics Insights, vol. 5,10.4137/III.S12145 Flower, DR 2013, 'Designing immunogenic peptides' Nature Chemical Biology, vol. 9, no. 12, pp. 749-753,10.1038/nchembio.1383 Atanasova, M, Patronov, A, Dimitrov, I, Flower, DR & Doytchinova, I 2013, 'EpiDOCK: a molecular docking-based tool for MHC class II binding prediction' Protein Engineering, Design and Selection, vol. 26, no. 10, pp. 631-634,10.1093/protein/gzt018 Dimitrov, I, Flower, DR & Doytchinova, I 2013, 'AllerTOP - a server for in silico prediction of allergens' BMC Bioinformatics, vol. 14, no. Suppl.6, S4,10.1186/1471-2105-14-S6-S4 Flower, DR 2012, 'Systematic identification of small molecule adjuvants' Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, vol. 7, no. 9, pp. 807-817,10.1517/17460441.2012.699958 Patronov, A, Dimitrov, I, Flower, DR & Doytchinova, I 2012, 'Peptide binding to HLA-DP proteins at pH 5.0 and pH 7.0: a quantitative molecular docking study' BMC Structural Biology, vol. 12, 20,10.1186/1472-6807-12-20 Flower, DR 2012, 'On the utility of alternative amino acid scripts' Bioinformation, vol. 8, no. 12, pp. 539-542,10.6026/97320630008539 Rai, J, Lok, KI, Mok, CY, Mann, H, Noor, M, Patel, P & Flower, DR 2012, 'Immunoinformatic evaluation of multiple epitope ensembles as vaccine candidates: E coli 536' Bioinformation, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 272-275,10.6026/97320630008272