Ivet Bahar, director of the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology at Stony Brook University, has been awarded a renewed National Institutes of Health R01 grant totaling $1,403,776 for her project “Toward a Deeper Understanding of Allostery and Allotargeting by Computational Approaches,” according to an April 9 announcement. The funding will support the project from May 1, 2026 through March 31, 2030.
The renewed grant continues a line of research that began during Bahar’s time at the University of Pittsburgh and was transferred to Stony Brook when she joined as director in January 2023. Her work uses advanced computational methods to study allostery—a process where biological molecules change shape to regulate their activity—and allotargeting, which is a drug discovery approach focusing on sites other than traditional active sites on proteins.
This continued federal investment highlights both the impact of Bahar’s research program and Stony Brook University’s role as an emerging center for quantitative and computational biology. The Laufer Center includes core and affiliated faculty from ten departments across Stony Brook University, including the Renaissance School of Medicine and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
The center focuses on areas such as molecular biophysics, synthetic biology, systems biology, network biology, drug discovery, neurobiology and neuroscience. It was established in memory of Louis and Beatrice Laufer by their children with support from Henry and Marsha Laufer in 2008.
