Operations Officer
Justin Lemkul is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Virginia Tech. He received both his B.S. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech before completing a four-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Computer-Aided Drug Design Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He began is independent career as an assistant professor in 2017 and currently serves as the Graduate Program Director in Biochemistry. His research focus is on computational modeling and simulation of biomolecules to understand structure-function relationships and engage in computer-aided drug design. He has particular interest in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s (the subject of his doctoral dissertation) and cancer. Justin is active in the development of the GROMACS (https://www.gromacs.org/) and CHARMM (https://academiccharmm.org/) simulation packages, as well as the Drude polarizable force field.
Justin has been a faculty senator since 2020 and has served on the Commission on Faculty Affairs since 2022, including as chair since Fall 2023. Contact: jalemkul@vt.edu
Duties of the Operations Officer
- To organize the election of faculty members to the senate based on the Faculty Senate Bylaws.
- To maintain a current list of senators and their membership as senate representatives to all entities, including councils, commissions, committees and working groups.
- To ensure that the following operations are completed: distributing the agenda prior to each meeting of the Faculty Senate; maintaining records, attendance, and minutes; distributing the Faculty Senate minutes to senators; posting Faculty Senate minutes on and maintaining the Faculty Senate website.