Dr. Prates is a chemist and holds MSc and Ph.D. degrees in Computational Biomolecular Sciences. Her current focus is the development of computational protocols and the application of the state-of-the-art methods of proteome-wide modeling, virtual screening, and enhanced sampling techniques of molecular dynamics simulations with the goal of integrating information of protein structure-function relationships into Systems Biology studies. As the functional role of proteins is tightly related to their structures, protein “structome” and interactome are valuable layers of information to be incorporated in meta-multiomics datasets (genomics, phylogenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, etc.) to better understand how information propagates from genes to complex biological responses. Erica has been involved in several projects within the Biosciences Division, including studies related to bioenergy (CBI), plant-microbe interfaces (PMI), and COVID-19. As a computational systems biologist, she has been contributing to build the connections between molecular interactions (Molecular Biophysics) and complex biological traits (Systems Biology).