biological physics research
In 1944, physicist Erwin Schrödinger published a short book, What is Life?, that changed the course of modern biology.
Could the behavior of a living organism be explained solely by physics and chemistry? Yes, it could, Schrödinger answered. "The obvious inability of present-day physics and chemistry to account for such events," he wrote, "is no reason at all for doubting that they can be accounted for by those sciences."
It's a sentiment that has lured generations of physical scientists to biology.
For the past half-century, researchers have applied the rigorous tools of physics to help answer Schrödinger’s question and unravel the fundamental mechanisms of life, but some of the most exciting challenges remain.
The Department of Physics maintains strong programs in both theoretical and experimental biological physics and hosts the NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics as well as Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Taekjip Ha's research group.
Experimental Biological Physics
Research Faculty
Yann R. Chemla—high-resolution optical tweezers, molecular motors, nucleic acid and protein translocases
Robert M. Clegg—dynamic, structural, and thermodynamic studies of functional biological systems
Ido Golding—spatio-temporal dynamics in living cells: real-time studies having single-event resolution
Steve Granick—Single-molecule methods, polymers, nanoparticles, complex fluids, imaging, and biomaterials
Martin Gruebele—fast-folding dynamics of proteins; fluorescence spectroscopy, nanosecond temperature jumps, small-
angle X-ray scattering, NMR
Taekjip Ha—single-molecule fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy; DNA protein interactions; molecular biology
Paul R. Selvin—structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules; molecular motors; FRET and LRET
Theoretical and Computational Biophysics
Research Faculty
Aleksei Aksimentiev—biomolecular modeling of molecular motors, mechanical proteins; high-throughput DNA sequencing, silicon biotechnology, nano-sensors; membrane transport, ion channels
Nigel D. Goldenfeld—multiscale modeling of pattern formation; ecology, scaling laws, biocomplexity, microbial ecology, evolution
Klaus Schulten—theoretical and computational biophysics; photosynthesis, vision, magnetotaxis; cellular mechanics; channels and transporters; multiscale modeling of cells, neural development and processing; bionanotechnology; software development
Weekly Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Seminar Series