Displaying items by tag: Biophysics

Biography

Maria Mukhina received a PhD degree in Optics (2013) from ITMO University (Saint Petersburg, Russia) where she investigated the physics of anisotropic and chiral nanocrystals. This work was supported by the Scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation for Young Scientists and Graduate Students. In 2016, Dr. Mukhina started her postdoctoral appointment at Harvard University where she worked on intracellular force sensing as applied to the mechanics of chromosomes. Dr. Mukhina joined UMD Physics as an assistant professor in 2024. Her research relies on nanobiotechnology, materials science, and new microscopy techniques to elucidate the mechanics of the genome.

Biography

Ronald Walsworth earned his B.S. in Physics from Duke University and his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University. His research interests are in developing precision measurement tools and applying them to diverse problems across the physical and life sciences.  Walsworth is the recipient of the Francis Pipkin Award in Precision Measurements from the American Physical Society; the Smithsonian Institution Exceptional Service Award; and the Duke University Faculty Scholar Award. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and serves as a Distinguished Traveling Lecturer for the Division of Laser Science of the American Physical Society.  Walsworth is also a Minta Martin Professor in the UMD Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Founding Director of the Quantum Technology Center.

Biography

Christopher Jarzynski received his A.B. (with high honors) in 1987 from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in 1994 from University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on statistical mechanics and thermodynamics at the molecular level, with a particular focus on the foundations of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. His research group has worked on topics that include the application of statistical mechanics to problems of biophysical interest; the analysis of artificial molecular machines; the development of efficient numerical schemes for estimating thermodynamic properties of complex systems; the relationship between thermodynamics and information processing; quantum and classical shortcuts to adiabaticity; and quantum thermodynamics. Jarzynski is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a UMD Distinguished University Professor. He received the 2019 Lars Onsager Prize for theoretical statistical physics, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2020 Simons Fellowship. In 2020, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Biography

Arpita Upadhyaya received her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, and then worked at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT before being awarded an MIT Pappalardo Fellowship in the Department of Physics. She spent a year in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at UNC Chapel Hill before joining the UMD faculty in 2006. She received a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2008, and was promoted to associate professor in 2014. Her research uses quantitative imaging, biophysical measurements and computational analysis to study cellular mechanics and the physical forces that enable a cell to sense and respond to its physical environment, in particular cells of the immune system and cancer cells.

Biography

Raj Roy is a professor of physics and Director of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology. He earned his Ph.D. in 1981 from the University of Rochester. He is a Fellow of American Physical Society and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. His research interests include the study of nonlinear dynamics and noise in optical devices and systems relevant to very practical technological applications such as compact disk players, fiber optic communications, and the development of optical switching devices and laser arrays.

Biography

Wolfgang Losert obtained his PhD from City College of the City University of New York. His research is centered on dynamical properties of Complex Systems at the convergence of physics and biology. A special focus is on applications to cancer biology. Examples of dynamical processes that are often found in complex systems are pattern formation and dynamical phase transitions. The main thrust of his work on living systems is to assess how cell motion and collective behavior are affected by physical cues, in particular the topography of the surface, surface adhesivity, and cell-cell adhesion. We discovered that cell migration can be guided by nanotopography via control of the dynamics of actin waves and that cell-surface adhesion can significantly alter the intracellular and collective cell dynamics. We also developed new tools to integrate measurements of the physical properties of living systems with biomedical phenotypes, via advanced statistical and machine learning analysis of multiple types of information, most at the single cell level.

Biography

Michelle Girvan received her B.S. in 1999 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in 2003 from Cornell University. Her research combines methods from statistical mechanics, dynamical systems, and graph theory to address interdisciplinary, network-related problems. She is interested in both broad theoretical approaches to complex networks as well as specific applications, especially to information cascades, epidemiology, and genetic regulatory networks.

In a 2019 podcast, she discussed her work in chaos and artificial intelligence.

In 2022, she was named a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.