“Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and weighted the mountains in scales?” ISAIAH 40, 12
Our Quest:
To identify questions that are testable by experiments.
To identify biological systems that are of fundamental significance and difficult to describe with established theoretical and computational approaches.
To develop emerging theoretical and computational techniques applicable to problems of interest.
To ascertain materials that facilitates innovations in battery technology.
Our Research:
Biophysics (computational). Development of structure-based (SMOG v2.4.2) models and OpenSMOG with aim to study via highly-optimized MD simulation packages, such as Gromacs and OpenMM, the large-scale conformational dynamics of the ribosome and other larger biomolecular systems in aqueous solution in the presence of ions.
Chemical biology (computational). Development of computational methods in OpenMM environment to study conformational dynamics of glycosaminoglycans polysaccharides, haparan sulfates, and their synthetic analogs. Our tool-kit includes state-of-the-art molecular dynamics simulations (explicit and coarse-grained) with sampling techniques, statistical mechanics, quantum chemsitry, and deep-learning (AI) methods.
Physical chemistry (theoretical). Development of renormalization group and holographic methods with aim to study dynamics of low temperature liquids.
Materials chemistry (computational). To study charge behaviors in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with aim to understand whether these materials can serve as a promising solid-state medium for the transport of multivalent ions. Our tool-kit includes state-of-the-art statistical mechanics and quantum chemsitry methods.
Our Principles and Philosophy:
We are inherently collaborative, open-minded in the way we approach a problem, value scientists from any discipline, and treat every one with kindness, gratitude, humility, and be generous and supportive of each other. We believe in the process of “learning and uncovering things, seeing things and understandin things you never understood before.” (Taubes).
Docet Omnia. “Not acquired truths, but the idea of freely-executed research” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, College de France)
Our Approach
Our science is driven by curiosity of the world around us. I develop tool box by making it a point of reading a lot of papers every day that are far removed from our research — with an off chance I will use it in the future to solve a problem. I also don’t get bored sitting in my study room (or office) and staring at pieces of hand-written equations for days and weeks at a time and not succeeding. I keep trying and by the laws of probability I will be able to forge ahead in a problem. I avoid phraseology such as “it is easy to see that”. We are guided in life by an old saying: ” If you keep you mind on something, you can reach Tao.”
Funding:
National Science Foundation (collaborative)