Overview
The Reker lab tightly integrates biomedical data science and wet-lab experiments for the analysis and design of therapeutic opportunities. Automated experimentation can be guided by active machine learning to generate knowledge-rich datasets. A key aspect of our research is improving our understanding of the most effective active machine learning workflows to enable the broad deployment of adaptive machine learning and automated experimentation.
We focus our adaptive model development on critical drug properties such as efficacy, biodistribution, metabolism, toxicity, and side-effects. Prospective applications of these predictions enable us to better understand limitations of currently approved medications as well as design new drug candidates, nanoparticles, and pharmaceutical formulations. By integrating clinical data analysis, we can rapidly validate the translational relevance of our predictions and conceive big data-driven protocols for precision medicine and personalized drug delivery.
Current Duke Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Scholarly Works
Short-Term Memory Active Learning for Drug Development.
Journal article Journal of chemical information and modeling · August 2026 Active learning is a powerful approach for efficient data selection in machine learning, particularly valuable in domains such as drug discovery where data acquisition is costly. Traditional active learning methods continuously expand the training set with ... Full text CiteIdentifying Antibiotic Effects of Investigational Drugs on Commensal Bacteria with Machine Learning.
Journal article ACS pharmacology & translational science · July 2026 Many human-targeted medications have been found to impact patients' gastrointestinal microbiomes, which has been proposed as an unrecognized source of drug side effects, comorbidities, and reduced treatment efficiencies. However, current methods for detect ... Full text CiteFine-tuned machine learning models for the discovery of dye nanoparticles with enhanced lung delivery.
Journal article Journal of controlled release : official journal of the Controlled Release Society · July 2026 Drug delivery using self-assembling drug-excipient nanoparticles offers a scalable strategy to improve the solubility, bioavailability, and biodistribution of poorly soluble therapeutics. However, progress in the development and translation of these materi ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Training Grant
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2026 - 2031Integrated Training in Anesthesiology Research
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by National Institute of General Medical Sciences · 1996 - 2031Pharmacological Sciences Training Program
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEPreceptor · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2025 - 2030View All Grants