May 17, 2022

Kevin McLoughlin applies computational biology to complex problems

Holly Auten/LLNL

Kevin McLoughlin has always been fascinated by the intersection of computing and biology. His LLNL career encompasses award-winning microbial detection technology, a COVID-19 antiviral drug design pipeline, and work with the ATOM consortium. The appeal for him in these projects lies at the intersection of computing and biology. “I love finding ways to visualize data that reveal relationships to the underlying biology,” he says. And he knows that successfully applying computational and machine learning techniques to real-world problems depends on the quality of the data. “Finding enough quality data and cleaning it up before you can train models are big challenges,” Kevin explains. “The work isn’t glamorous, and doing it correctly requires domain knowledge.” Read more at LLNL Computing.