RESONANCE

BIOPHYSICS ANNUAL NE WSLETTER

Resonance Fall 2017

Adding Flexibility to the Agenda

Every August thousands of wherever, and whenever family life and research Inside this issue: people flood into Urbana- they pleased to test previ- life”. Rather Dr. Das says, A LEGACY IN COMPUTA- 2 Champaign bringing ex- ous claims that low control “You have to do everything TIONAL citement, traffic, and the and high demands increase efficiently and at the same prospects of a fulfilling work stress. After the time…It’s all in a day’s GRADUATE STUDENT 2 new school year. Bearing twelve-month trial, the work” Or take Dr. Satish ACHIEVEMENTS this in mind, graduate stu- study showed that employ- Nair who has a “small col- CONGRATULATIONS GRAD- 3 dents and professors alike ees experienced lower lection of old cookbooks UATES! know that their schedules levels of psychological and from all over the world.” WELCOME TO OUR NEW 3 will become even more physical stress while com- He even finds the time to FACULTY! hectic: teaching, studying, pleting their work as relia- use them even among other writing, going to confer- bly as the control group. hobbies saying, “I love to ENTERING CLASS OF 2016 4 ences, and doing research. This shows that students cook and enjoy testing new

We busy ourselves with should continue to volunteer and different cooking tech- BIOPHYSICS SOCI- 4 these essential tasks often at soup kitchens, play ulti- niques. I am a big fan of ETY UPDATE lamenting the loss of flexi- mate frisbee, attend con- learning to do things from bility that our summer certs, and even spend time scratch like making my own MARK YOUR CALENDERS 4 schedules once allowed. with friends. Even when butter, breads, and spice Even though the school work reaches its fingers blends. I also love to tinker year brings added stress- into all aspects of our life with electronics and like to ors such as attending lec- to try to snatch up free tweak old audio equipment tures, planning experi- time, the other activities by replacing newer parts.” ments, and finishing school can be integrated in. Such On October 23, 2017 the work graduate students do is the case with Dr. Di- Biophysics Society Re- still have flexibility and wakar Shukla: “As an assis- search and Networking should use it to pursue pas- tant professor, it is difficult Date: October 23, 2017 Symposium will feature sions and restore their en- to have hobbies.” But, Dr. Time: 10:30 AM to 3:00 PM three more professor lec- ergy. Shukla has enjoyed astron- Place: 104 Illini Union tures on non-research top- omy since his undergradu- Lunch is provided Recently, the New York ics in hopes of encouraging ate studies and even rolls Times published an article all of us to pursue our pas- Tentative Speakers: out his Dobsonian telescope outlining a new workplace sions and accomplish our Martin Gruebele, Emad Taj- on clear nights to look at sociological structure like goals in the coming aca- khorshid and Paul Selvin the stars in deep space. Dr. that in higher education. In demic year. Aditi Das is a mother of the study, a group of em- two outside of work but Poster session participation is ployees were given the says that, “everything is open to all Biophysics graduate freedom and encourage- merged together and I students ment to do their work don't distinguish between Contact: [email protected] RESONANCE

A Legacy in Computational Biophysics: Klaus Schulten Dr. Klaus Schulten was an a new symposium on No- and quantitative biology. integral member of our vember 7-9, 2017 where Now, his legacy continues pro- some of the world’s top through these students as gram and very active in the talents in computational they hold notable positions biophysics community. biophysics among other in both academics and the Schulten passed away due fields will be displayed. industry. At the University to an illness this past year. Schulten’s research focused of Illinois Schulten earned As a greatly respected on the structure and func- the honors as Swanlund scholar at the University of tion of cells using molecular Professor of , affili- Illinois and beyond we dynamics. His research ated with the Department would like to honor him and group in collaboration with of Chemistry and, the Cen- his contributions to science. many others looked to build ter for Biophysics and The past year he was rec- a computational model of Quantitative Biology. He ognized during a memorial the entire cell. Using Non- also served as Director of HIS LEGACY lecture by distinguished equilibrium dynamics Schul- the Biomedical Technology CONTINUES biophysicist and advisor, ten was able to develop Research Center for Macro- Dr. . During efficient computational molecular Modeling and THROUGH THESE this lecture, Karplus spoke methods to analyze cellular Bioinformatics as well as STUDENTS AS about the great advance- processes. During his 40 Co-Director of the Center THEY HOLD ments that have been made years of work Schulten es- for the Physics of Living by Schulten and others in tablished new programs for Cells. We were privileged NOTABLE the past few decades. Dur- structural analyses that are to learn from Dr. Klaus POSITIONS IN ing Schulten’s almost 25 used throughout the field of Schulten and now remem- BOTH ACADEMICS years at the University of computational biophysics. ber him as a great man as Illinois, he was a faculty Training more than 80 PhD well as a scholar. AND INDUSTRY member in physics and at students, his group has pro- (Tajkhorshid and Chipot. the Beckman institute. His duced countless publications Tribute to Klaus Schulten J legacy will continue through in the areas of biophysics phys chem B 2017) Graduate Student Achievements Kapil Dave (Gruebele) proposal titled “Using Simu- fellowship for the academic was chosen as one of the lations and Machine Learn- sessions 2016-2017 and speakers at the 3rd Inter- ing-based Markov State 2017-2018. national Conference on Models To Build a Tool for Andres Arango Protein Folding and Dy- Rational Drug Discovery”. (Tajkhorshid) received the namics, all travel and ex- The fellowship is adminis- National GEM Consortium penses paid. The meeting tered by the National Associate Fellowship. The was held from November 8 Academies of Sciences on GEM Fellowship promotes -11, 2016 at National Cen- behalf of the Ford Founda- opportunities for individuals tre for Biological Sciences, tion. to enter industry at the Bangalore, India. The CSE program at Illinois graduate level and also Kevin Cheng (Shukla) was chooses 8 fellows each offers exposure to a num- awarded the Ford Pre- year, and Shriyaa Mittal ber of opportunities in aca- doctoral Fellowship for his (Shukla) was awarded the demia.

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Congratulations Graduates! During the past year 12 students received their doctoral degrees and another received their master’s. Here is where they are headed next and we wish them our best in their journeys ahead!

Janish Desai (Oldfield ) R&D Research Scientist, Abbott Laboratories Seyfullah Kotil (Jakobsson) Postdoc, Dept of Microbiology, U of Wisconsin, Madison Kai Wen Teng (Selvin) Postdoc, NYU Medical Center Stuart Rose (Crofts) Kevin Whitley (Chemla) Postdoc at Technical University of Delft, Netherlands and Newcastle University, England Charles Wilson (Crofts) Kapil Dave (Gruebele) Design and Yield Engineer, Intel R&D, Oregon Tao Jiang (Tajkhorshid) Piyush Labhsetwar (Luthey-Schulten) Chen-Yu Li (Aksimentiev) Insight Data Science Fellows program Wen Ma (Chemla/Luthey-Schulten) Marco Tjioe (Selvin) Sreeradha Biswas (Michael Oelze/Nair) Welcome to our New Faculty! Biophysics is excited to tional biophysics and into the small capsids un- Yang Zhang uses compu- announce that four new chemistry. He is currently der high pressure. tational and statistical faculty members from focused on membrane Sergei Maslov In the bio- physics in order to study different departments related dynamics and engineering department the dynamics of liquids in around the campus have protein folding in more has focused on databanks extreme environments. In become biophysics facul- complicated environments. for big data sets specifi- addition he studies the ty. We would like to wel- cally in , bio- come: fuels, and engineering. Taras Pogorelov As a Using the supercomputing Professor in the Chemistry center at Illinois, Maslov department Pogorelov collaborates with many groups doing computa-

energy landscape of soft Alex Evilevitch Working matter. Zhang is a profes- in the college of veteri- sor in nuclear, plasma, nary medicine in the and radiological engi- pathobiology department used trends in large data neering departments and Evilevitch looks at how sets to make accurate the Beckman Institute viral DNA is packaged predictions. (Photos from illinois.edu).

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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA - C H A M P A I G N

ENTERING CLASS OF FALL 2016

The Biophysics program became home to 13 new students beginning in the Fall of 2016. Pictured above during their first week on campus. Front Row: Kevin Cheng, Jordan Sickle, Yongjae Lee, Brittney Gorman, Shidi Zhao. Second Row: Justin Valletta, Ani- ket Ravan, Nandan Haloi, Shashank Pant, Steve Yeo, Mayank Boob, Andres Arango. Third Row: Archit Vasan.

Illinois Biophysics Society Mark your calendars Update The Illinois Biophysics Society (IBS) September 19, 2017 is a student run organization com- CPLC Biannual Student/Postdoc Symposium prised of Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology graduate October 23, 2017 students whose mission is to im- Biophysics Graduate Research and Networking Symposium prove the lifestyle, educational experience, and future career op- November 7-9, 2017 portunities of biophysics peers. The Klaus Schulten Memorial Symposium new Illinois Biophysics Society would like introduce this year’s Illinois Biophysics Newsletter Team Society executive committee members comprised of board 2017-2018 Shriyaa Mittal as the President, Editors: Brittney Gorman & Shriyaa Mittal Roshni Bano for Secretary and the Special Thanks to: Dr. Satish Nair & Cindy Dodds Treasurer, Eric Shinn. In the upcoming academic year IBS will have a new webpage that can be accessed trough Illinois Biophysics Society the Biophysics Program website: http:// Contact us at: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] biophysics.illinois.edu/ibs/ and a Facebook group (Illinois Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1190028721102690/ Biophysics Society). All IBS updates will be posted there. Page 4