Debswapna Bhattacharya
Debswapna Bhattacharya
দেবস্বপ্ন ভট্টাচার্য
(he/him/his)
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Virginia Tech
3160 Torgersen Hall, 620 Drillfield Dr. Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Office
3120B Torgersen Hall
Phone
: +1 (540) 231-2865
Fax
: +1 (540) 231-6075
Email
dbhattacharya@vt.edu
NEWS
1 Mar. 2026:
Thrilled to have received an
NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA)
under the
Established Investigator (EI)
category! This five year, sole-PI
Outstanding Investigator Award (R35)
from NIGMS will continue to support our work through 2031.
2 Oct. 2025:
Honored to present an invited talk at
CASP Nucleic Acid Special Interest Group (CASP NA SIG)
seminar series.
16 Sep. 2025:
Our
ProRNA3D-single work
was featured in
Virginia Tech News
and broadly reported by various media outlets including
AAAS EurekAlert
Yahoo News
, and
Microsoft MSN
16 Sep. 2025:
New
Cell Systems paper
published. Congratulations to Roche and Sumit!
26 Aug. 2025:
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Sumit Tarafder for receiving a
Pratt Fellowship
! This the second time in a row Sumit was selected to receive the Pratt Fellowship. Way to go!
13 Aug. 2025:
Welcome to Xingyue Feng who joined us as a Ph.D. student.
31 Jul. 2025:
Our
EquiPNAS paper
was ranked among the most-cited recent articles in
Nucleic Acids Research
. Congratulations to Roche, Bernie, Hossain, and Sumit!
14 Jul. 2025:
Honored to present an invited talk at
IISc Bangalore
hosted by the
Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS)
at IISc.
11 Jul. 2025:
Honored to present an invited talk at
ISI Kolkata
in a Mini Symposium on Contemporary Advancements in Computational Intelligence, jointly organized by the
Centre for AI and ML
at ISI Kolkata and
IEEE CIS Kolkata Section
25 Jun. 2025:
New
Briefings in Bioinformatics paper
published. Congratulations to Sriniketh!
24 Jun. 2025:
Honored to present an invited keynote talk at the NSF-sponsored
AI-Powered Materials Discovery
workshop at the
University of South Dakota
in Vermillion, SD.
3 Jun. 2025:
New
Bioinformatics paper
published. Congratulations to Maryam and thanks to my collaborator Prof. T. M. Murali!
30 Dec. 2024:
New
CSBJ paper
published. Congratulations to Hossain!
11 Nov. 2024:
New
JCIM paper
published. Congratulations to Sumit!
9 Oct. 2024:
New
JMB paper
published. Congratulations to Trevor!
9 Sep. 2024:
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Sumit Tarafder for receiving a
Pratt Fellowship
23 Aug. 2024:
New
ICIBM 2024 paper
accepted. Congratulations to Hossain!
22 Aug. 2024:
Welcome to Xinyu Wang who joined us as a Ph.D. student.
17 Jul. 2024:
We enjoyed a group lunch to honor our newest Ph.D. graduate Rahmatullah Roche and bid him farewell.
15 Jul. 2024:
Excited to present our work at the
3DSIG COSI Track
of
ISMB 2024
in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
12 Jul. 2024:
New
Biology Methods & Protocols paper
published. Congratulations to Sumit and Roche!
8 Jul. 2024:
Congratulations to Rahmatullah Roche for successfully defendeding his Ph.D. dissertation! Roche will move on to be an Assistant Professor at
Columbus State University
4 Jun. 2024:
Grateful and excited to have received an
NIH equipment supplement grant
to acquire a new
NVIDIA DGX H100
GPU cluster to accelerate foundational deep learning method development for protein modeling.
22 May 2024:
Our
proposal was selected
to be supported through the
NSF-led National AI Research Resource Pilot awards
. Thrilled to be a part of this exciting opportunity. [
VT News
23 Apr. 2024:
Ph.D. student Rahmatullah Roche accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Computer Science department at
Columbus State University
. Congratulations!
28 Mar. 2024:
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Rahmatullah Roche for receiving the 3rd place award in the Flash Talk category at the
VT GPSS Graduate Research Symposium
28 Jan. 2024:
New
Nucleic Acids Research paper
published. Congratulations to Roche, Bernie, Hossain, and Sumit!
8 Dec. 2023:
We enjoyed a
group lunch
to honor our newest Ph.D. graduate Md Hossain Shuvo and bid him farewell.
5 Dec. 2023:
Congratulations to Md Hossain Shuvo for successfully defendeding his Ph.D. dissertation! Hossain will move on to be an Assistant Professor at
Prairie View A&M University
10 Nov. 2023:
Ph.D. student Md Hossain Shuvo accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the
Computer Science
department at
Prairie View A&M University
. Congratulations!
14 Sep. 2023:
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Rahmatullah Roche for receiving a
Pratt Fellowship
2 Sep. 2023:
We enjoyed a
group hike
to the McAfee Knob.
31 Aug. 2023:
New
PLoS Computational Biology paper
published. Congratulations to Roche, Bernie, and Hossain!
10 Aug. 2023:
Welcome to Dr. Trevor Norton who joined us as a postdoc.
1 Aug. 2023:
We moved into a new lab space at
3120 Torgersen Hall
31 Jul. 2023:
New
PNAS paper
published. Congratulations to Bernie and Roche!
27 Jul. 2023:
Our
PPP
proposal is selected for a
DA 2.0 Phase II
award. Thrilled to be a part of this transdisciplinary team.
25 Jul. 2023:
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Md Hossain Shuvo for receiving a
Pratt Fellowship
25 Jul. 2023:
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Bernard Moussad for receiving a
Walts Fellowship
20 Jun. 2023:
New
Bioinformatics Advances paper
published. Congratulations to Hossain, Mohimenul, and Roche!
8 Jun. 2023:
Thankful to have received
tenure at Virginia Tech
. This bulletin started.
SPONSORS
ABOUT
I am an Associate Professor in the
Department of Computer Science
at
Virginia Tech
, based in the
Blacksburg campus
My primary research interests are computational biology & bioinformatics (
CBB
) and applied machine learning (
ML
) with a particular focus on
artificial intelligence (AI) for structural biology
I am also interested in
AI-driven biomedical data science
for the extraction of knowledge from massive biological datasets.
I obtained my PhD in Computer Science from the
University of Missouri
in 2016 under the supervision of
Prof. Jianlin Cheng
. Before joining Virginia Tech in 2022, I was an Assistant Professor at
Auburn University
(2017-2021). Selected honors and awards I received include:
NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) for Established Investigator, 2026
NSF National AI Research Resource Award, 2024
National Distinction and Outstanding Contributor, Virginia Tech, 2023
NSF CAREER Award, 2020
Ginn Faculty Fellowship, Auburn University, 2020
NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) for Early Stage Investigator, 2020
Outstanding Engineering Faculty Award, Auburn University, 2019
Outstanding CS PhD Student Award, University of Missouri, 2014
RESEARCH
The
long-term goal
of my research is to deepen our understanding of the fundamental biomolecular sequence-structure-function relationship through the lens of computational modeling. My current research takes a critical step toward this goal by developing, evaluating, and disseminating a new generation of knowledge-guided and integrative machine learning methods and resources for modeling and characterization of biomolecules at scale.
Active Projects:
AI & ML
for macromolecular modeling
LLMs
for biomolecular interactions
Physics + ML
for fine-tuning and refinement
Geometric deep learning
on molecular graphs
Benchmarking
of state of the art
GROUP
Current Group Members:
Xingyue Feng
: PhD Student in CS at VT (2025 - Present)
Sriniketh Vangaru
: Undergraduate Student in CS at VT (2024 - Present)
Xinyu Wang
: PhD Student in CS at VT (2024 - Present)
Sumit Tarafder
: PhD Student in CS at VT (2022 - Present)
Former Group Members:
Trevor Norton
: Postdoc at VT (2023 - 2025). Now Senior Data Scientist at RTX Corporation.
Rahmatullah Roche
: PhD in CS at VT (2018 - 2024). Now Assistant Professor at Columbus State University.
Md Hossain Shuvo
: PhD in CS at VT (2018 - 2023). Now Assistant Professor at Prairie View A&M University.
Sutanu Bhattacharya
: PhD in CS at AU (2017 - 2021). Now Assistant Professor at Auburn University Montgomery.
Rahul Alapati
: MS Thesis in CS at AU (2017 - 2019). Now Software Engineer at Microsoft.
Andrew J. McGehee
: BS in CSSE at AU (2018 - 2020). Then Software Engineer at Google.
Carmen Stowe: BS in CSSE at AU (2017 - 2018). Then MIT Lincoln Laboratory and MS Student at Georgia Tech.
Visitors and Interns:
Maryam Haghani: Graduate Student in CS at VT co-advised with Prof. T. M. Murali (2023 - 2025)
Erin Wienke: Graduate Student in CS at VT (2024)
Nabayan Chaudhury: Graduate Student in CS at VT (2023 - 2024)
Bernard Moussad: Graduate Student in CS at VT (2021 - 2024)
Sajib Acharjee Dip: Graduate Student in CS at VT (2023)
Mohimenul Karim: Graduate Student in CS at VT (2021 - 2023)
Fatemeh Sarshartehrani: Graduate Student in CS at VT (2022)
Muhammad Gulfam: Graduate Student in CSSE at AU (2020 - 2021)
Hudson Chromy: Undergraduate Student in CSSE at AU (2019)
Behnam Rasoolian: Graduate Student in CSSE at AU (2017 - 2018)
Tian Xia: Graduate Student in CSSE at AU (2017)
Donald Holyfield: Undergraduate Student in CSSE at AU (2018)
Swati Baskiyar: Undergraduate Student in CSSE at AU (2018)
TEACHING
Past, Current, and Upcoming Courses:
Fall 2025: CS 5805. Advanced Machine Learning
(VT)
Fall 2024: CS 4824. Machine Learning (VT)
Fall 2024: CS 6824. AI-powered Molecular Modeling (VT)
Spring 2024: CS 4824. Machine Learning (VT)
Spring 2022: CS 6824. AI-powered Molecular Modeling (VT)
Spring 2022: CS 4824. Machine Learning (VT)
Fall 2021: COMP 3270. Introduction to Algorithms (AU)
Spring 2020: COMP 5960. Computational Biology (AU)
Fall 2020: COMP 3270. Introduction to Algorithms (AU)
Spring 2019: COMP 5960. Computational Biology (AU)
Fall 2018: COMP 3270. Introduction to Algorithms (AU)
Spring 2018: COMP 5960. Computational Biology (AU)
Fall 2017: COMP 3270. Introduction to Algorithms (AU)
Spring 2017: CS 898AR. Machine Learning in Biology (WSU)
Fall 2016: CS 797I. Introduction to Bioinformatics (WSU)
JOIN US
I am always looking for self-motivated students and postdocs to join my group.
So, depending on your situation, please follow one of the follwing routes:
You are a prospective PhD student
: please apply directly to
CS at VT PhD program
and list me as a faculty of interest. Afterwards, send me an email with the subject line "[Prospect] Interested in joining your group (PhD)" with a CV and a brief description of your interests. Admissions are centralized and decisions are made by committee.
You are a prospective Postdoc
: send me an email with the subject line "[Prospect] Interested in joining your group (Postdoc)" with a CV, link to your publications, and a brief description of your interests and background.
You are a student already at VT
: send me an email with the subject line "[Prospect] Interested in joining your group (VT Student)" with a CV and a brief description of your interests and background.
RESOURCES
Extramural Funding:
NIH EI MIRA (R35) from NIGMS
2026 - 2031
2R35GM138146
Active
NSF CAREER
2020 - 2026
DBI2208679
Active
NIH ESI MIRA (R35) from NIGMS
2020 - 2026
R35GM138146
Completed
NSF EAGER
2020 - 2022
IIS2030722
Completed
Useful Links:
CS at VT Intranet
CS at VT Wiki
CBB Group in CS at VT
ML Group in CS at VT
CS at VT Grad Programs
CS at VT Teaching
ISCB
CASP
ACM SIGBio
Debswapna Bhattacharya,
US