Dr. Dimitrios Morikis is Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California Riverside (UCR). He is also faculty member at UCR’s Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, Program of Materials Science and Engineering, and Center for Plant Cell Biology. Dr. Morikis received his B.S. in Physics in 1983 from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and his M.S. in Physics in 1985 and his Ph.D. in Physics (with specialization in Biophysics) in 1990, both from Northeastern University, Boston. He did his Postdoctoral Fellowship in Structural Biology at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, and a Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computational Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego. His work is highly cross-disciplinary using methods from biophysics, structural biology, computational chemistry, biomolecular informatics, and bioengineering. His current work focuses on immune system function and regulation, design of proteins with tailored properties, design of peptide-single elements of secondary structure, knowledge-based drug design, and development of structural bioinformatics methods. His research is hybrid, computational, with emphasis on electrostatic calculations, molecular dynamics simulations, and docking-based virtual screening, and experimental, with emphasis on NMR spectroscopy. Dr. Morikis was elected AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Fellow in 2006 and AIMBE (American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering) Fellow in 2008. He has received the 2013 Carolyn K. McGillvray Memorial Award for Macular Degeneration Research, the UCR 2012 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement, the 2011 OCEC (Orange County Engineering Council) Distinguished Engineering Educator Award, the UCR 2003-2004 Non-Senate Distinguished Researcher Award, an NIH (National Institutes of Health) National Service Fellowship Award (1999-2001), and was Fulbright Scholar in 1983-1984. He is author in more than 100 research papers, reviews and book chapters, and has co-edited the volume “Structural Biology of the Complement System”. Dr. Morikis is Co-Section Editor at BMC Biophysics, contributing faculty member at Faculty of 1000 Biology, and serves as a member of the Editorial Board at Faculty 1000 Research, the Open Bioinformatics Journal, and Molecular Biology International. He is also founding Faculty Advisory Board member, and current Chair, at UCR Undergraduate Research Journal. Dr. Morikis has taught Biophysics and Biothermodynamics, Biomolecular Engineering, Computational Modeling of Biomolecules, and Integration of Computational and Experimental Biology.