Dr. Gerald Lushington is a pharmaceutical researcher who consults on a diverse range of different biomedical and biotechnological projects. With well over 200 publications to his name, He has served in editorial capacities with multiple academic journals, and has an appointment as adjunct professor of Foods, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health in the College of Human Ecology at Kansas State University. He is currently the principal consultant at LiS Consulting, in Lawrence Kansas – an informatics consultancy practice with clientele spanning diverse biotech and biomedical applications across both coasts and the U.S. heartland. His research foci include both molecular simulations (docking, molecular dynamics, quantum chemistry and so forth) and statistical modeling (QSAR, machine learning, clustering.

Although most of Lushington's research publications focus on applied chemical biology, He has a strong background in novel method development. Some of his more noteworthy theoretical contributions include formulating variants of the comparative binding energy (COMBINE) technique for receptor-based QSAR assessment of enzyme modulation trends, with special training protocols able to smooth out ligand-dependent differences between receptor induced fit, desolvation, and entropic effects. More recently he collaborated on work aimed at the use of biclustering to systematically partition multimodal biochemical and physiological observations. The latter study, although not widely published, was selected as the 'best paper in medicinal chemistry' at Pharmaco'12 in Kos, Greece.

In recent years, Lushington's method development has taken a back seat as successful antimicrobial and anticancer indications have continued to mount for three different families of peptide mimics he helped to develop in conjunction with the transformation comparative genomics studies of Professor Tonatiuh Melgarejo, of which one family has been licensed for commercial development and the others remains a closely guarded basis for an emerging new commercial enterprise.

Two non-technical areas that Lushington has invested recent efforts in include a reasoned attempt to understand and advocate for clear-minded remediation of issues causing irreproducibility in biomedical research, and the public lauding and promotion of selfless scientific contributions made by the progenitors of open source software.

Chemical Informatics; Molecular Modeling; Structural Biology; Rational Drug Design; Data Analytics; Neuropharmacology; Antimicrobial Peptides.