Sam Safran, the founding editor-in- chief of The Biophysicist, BPS’s open access biophysics education journal, has received the prestigious distinction of Laureate of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics for 2022. Safran received the prize for his decisive contributions to the understanding of the structure and dynamics of cells and their interactions with their physical environment. The theoretical research provided a fundamental and conceptual basis for cell mechanobiology, including the response of the stress fibers, sarcomeres, and cellular adhesions to forces generated by acto-myosin within the cell, other cells, or external mechanical sources.
Safran explains, “Of particular importance was the introduction of the multiscale idea of contractile force dipoles that can apply locally to the active contractile forces in cells or at the cellular scale, where an entire, adhered cell behaves and responds mechanically as a force dipole. Applications to experiments included the response of cells to cyclic and static stretch, cardiomyocyte beating and its regulation by mechanical probes, and orientational order of the stress fibers of adhered cells and its response to the rigidity or softness of its mechanical environment.” As for the future direction of his research, he adds, “Recently, we are focusing on mesoscale, theoretical descriptions of phase separation in cells with experimental applications to chromatin organization in the nucleus as well as protein condensates, where a novel aspect is their long-time, non-equilibrium behavior due to protein production and degradation”.
Safran is a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Physics at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Although his institution is primarily a research institution with no undergraduates, he has a keen interest in education. “While teaching is ‘voluntary,’ I am motivated to teach because of my enthusiasm for transmitting the fundamentals that underlie research in biophysics and how those relate to the generic, soft-matter properties of interfaces, polymers, membranes, and self-assembled systems,” he shares. He also has a long-standing collaboration with Weizmann’s Department of Science Teaching in the development of a novel course for high school students that teaches statistical thermodynamics with biophysical examples, using computer simulations.
The research that led to the award of the Sackler Prize has factored into Safran’s teaching. “Our recent interest in the polymer physics associated with nuclear-scale chromatin organization has motivated me to include a lecture on chromatin physics in the polymer unit of my graduate course on soft matter,” Safran says. “The idea of mechanical force dipoles (a region containing spatially separated, equal and opposite force) has its analogies in electrostatics (electric dipoles) and motivates students to understand the analogies between elasticity and electrostatics.”
In his capacity as editor-in-chief, Safran would like the entire biophysics community to understand that their biophysics teaching and student learning can be enhanced by research-based approaches, new teaching materials, and assessment studies, such as those reported in The Biophysicist. While the primary disciplines that underlie biophysics (chemistry, physics, and biology) have well-established teaching-oriented communities, this is not yet the case in biophysics. “Ironically, the need for enhanced teaching and educational research in the field is even greater than in the primary disciplines, due to the multifaceted nature of biophysics,” Safran asserts. “Our journal is nurturing those educators (which are in many cases, also outstanding researchers) who recognize the need for novel teaching and learning approaches and how those can be based on educational research,” he continues. “We are reaching out, via webinars, BPS conferences, and our special journal issues, to the entire biophysics community to provide tools that address these needs and, in doing so, to build networks around a core of scientists interested and working in biophysics education.”
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