Ratul Chowdhury graduated with a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Chemical Engineering from India in 2009. He joined the research group of Prof. Costas Maranas at Penn State for his PhD after that. His thesis presents a novel set of computational protein design tools and some success stories achieved using these tools. These tools are unique in essence that they employ a synergy between mixed integer linear optimization and molecular mechanics calculations to identify novel sequences of channel proteins, enzymes and antibody variable fragments. These novel sequences accomplish an intended biochemical/ biophysical objective by offering a convenient structure to achieve the same. His main focus has been redesigning pore sizes of a naturally occurring beta-barrel porin to enable solute separations. PoreDesigner was published in 2018 and has been used for water filtration, drug delivery devices, and single stranded DNA sequencing endeavors. Having defended, he will soon start his post-doctoral stint at Harvard Medical School. He has also applied for tenure track positions this fall with an intended joining date of Late 2021.