Dr Andrey Kovalevsky | Senior R&D Scientist
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

Dr. Andrey Kovalevsky is a structural biologist, biochemist and a Senior R&D Scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Kovalevsky studied organic chemistry and chemical crystallography at Kharkiv State University, Kharkiv, Ukraine, receiving M.Sc. degree with Honors. He received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 2003 from the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, working with Prof. Philip Coppens. He studied macromolecular crystallography, biochemistry and molecular biology while working as a Postdoctoral Associate at Georgia State University. He held a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship while at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Prior to joining ORNL, he held a position as a Staff Scientist at LANL working on the Protein Crystallography Station. Dr. Kovalevsky has authored over 190 publications; his research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Department of Energy (DOE) and LANL and ORNL Laboratory Directed Research & Development programs.
Dr. Kovalevsky’s current research focuses on studying the structure-dynamics-function relationships in biomacromolecular drug targets, including design of protease inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 and antidotes against nerve gas and pesticide poisoning, and studying the specificity of vitamin B6-dependent enzymes. His approach combines innovative biophysical and computational methodologies, such as X-ray and neutron crystallography at near-physiological conditions, neutron vibrational spectroscopy, biomolecular simulations and structure-based virtual reality (VR)-assisted drug design.