Ivet Bahar, director of Stony Brook University’s Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, has been awarded a renewal of her National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant titled, “Toward a Deeper Understanding of Allostery and Allotargeting by Computational Approaches,” totaling $1,403,776 for the project period May 1, 2026 through March 31, 2030.
This renewal continues a distinguished line of research originally funded by the NIH during Bahar’s tenure at the University of Pittsburgh and subsequently transferred to Stony Brook University in January 2023, when she joined Stony Brook as director of the Laufer Center.
Bahar’s work employs cutting-edge computational methods to advance the field’s understanding of allostery — the process by which biological molecules regulate their activity through conformational changes — and allotargeting, a promising approach to drug discovery that seeks to modulate protein function at sites other than the traditional active site. This renewed federal investment reflects both the exceptional quality and impact of Bahar’s research program and Stony Brook University’s growing prominence as a hub for quantitative and computational biology.
With core and affiliated faculty across 10 departments at Stony Brook University, including the Renaissance School of Medicine and at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Laufer Center is a research hub at the interface between life sciences and physical/mathematical/computer sciences on Long Island, New York. Research areas include molecular biophysics, synthetic biology, cell and systems biology, network biology, drug discovery and neurobiology/neuroscience. It was established in 2008 in memory of Louis and Beatrice Laufer by their children, Helen Laufer Kaplan and Howard Kaplan, Jeffrey and Barbara Laufer, and initiated by a major philanthropic gift from Henry and Marsha Laufer.
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