Image
Ronald Hills

Ron Hills, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration

Location

Pharmacy Building, Rm 305
Eligible for Student Opportunities

Ron Hills is a tenured faculty in the Westbrook College of Health Professions. Since his initial appointment in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, he has taught a variety of courses in biochemistry, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and data science. Dr. Hills' research expertise is in multiscale computational modeling. His interests also include the role of lipids in chronic health and disease, which he incorporates in his teaching. Students working with Dr. Hills' learn how to develop predictive computational models and perform meta-analyses of the current research literature. Prior to joining UNE, Dr. Hills was a National Institutes of Health Kirschstein Fellow at the University of Chicago and University of Utah, where he received his postdoctoral training in advanced multiscale modeling techniques.

Interested in learning computer programming? See our:  Computational Workshop

Credentials

Education

Ph.D., Biophysics
Scripps Research Institute
2008
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, Biochemistry
Florida State University
2003

Expertise

Biochemistry
Cardiovascular disease
Medicinal chemistry
Nutrition
Pharmacology
Protein structure and function
Scientific computing
Team-based learning

Post-Doctoral Training

NIH Kirschstein Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2009-2010
University of Utah, 2008-2010

Research

Selected publications

White, A.M.B., H.R. Mishcon, J.L. Redwanski and R.D. Hills Jr. 2020. Statin treatment in specific patient groups: Role for improved cardiovascular risk markers. Journal of Clinical Medicine 9:3748.  Article

Hills Jr., R.D., B.A. Pontefract, H.R. Mishcon, C.A. Black, S.C. Sutton and C.R. Theberge. 2019. Gut microbiome: Profound implications for diet and disease. Nutrients 11:1613. 2021 Best Paper Award, Article

Hills Jr., R.D. 2018. Refining amino acid hydrophobicity for dynamics simulation of membrane proteins. PeerJ 6:e4230.  Article

Fosso-Tande, J., C. Black, S.G. Aller, L. Lu and R.D. Hills Jr. 2017. Simulation of lipid-protein interactions with the CgProt force field. AIMS Molecular Science 4:352-69.  Article

Hills Jr., R.D. and N. McGlinchey. 2016. Model parameters for simulation of physiological lipids. Journal of Computational Chemistry 37:1112-18.  Article

Research interests

Multiscale modeling and biomolecular simulation
Lipids and cell membrane dynamics
Multidrug resistance transport proteins