Matthew T. Zackin

Matthew Zackin is a graduate student in biological engineering bringing computational power to antimalarial drug discovery by extracting insights from data researchers typically discarded. Early-stage screening campaigns generate vast amounts of negative results—compounds that don’t work—yet these failed experiments hold valuable information for identifying better molecules. He reinterprets phenotypic datasets through cheminformatic analysis of synthetic macrocycles, combining chemical fingerprints, graph-based representations, and macrocycle-specific features with machine learning classification models. MATLAB’s Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox powers his dimensionality reduction, feature extraction, and predictive modeling on high-throughput data. As a MathWorks Fellow, he will build generalizable workflows using MATLAB and RDKit applicable across compound classes and therapeutic areas. Matthew’s research stands to accelerate antimalarial drug discovery while creating accessible tools for the broader research community, ultimately helping combat one of the world’s deadliest parasitic diseases.