Each year at the Annual Meeting, we invite a group of attendees to share their experiences and perspectives on the Society's blog. Read about this year's crop of bloggers below, and then follow their adventures here on the blog throughout the meeting.
Jessica Bodosa
I am a Biophysics PhD student in Dr. Jeffery Klauda’s lab, at the University of Maryland, College Park interested in molecular dynamics simulations of membrane proteins and ligands. I have also been collecting experimental ITC data for lipid-metal forcefield development. I did my Bachelor’s and Master’s in biology from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. I am from the state of Assam which is the largest tea producer in India. Also, I recently started oil painting again!
Emmet Francis
My name is Emmet Francis, I am currently an ASEE Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rangamani Lab at UC San Diego. I have been attending the Biophysical Society Meeting annually since 2016, ever since I started my scientific research career as an undergraduate at UC Davis. I continued at UC Davis as a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering, researching the intersection between calcium signaling and mechanics in human neutrophils in Dr. Volkmar Heinrich's Lab. I began with purely experimental work, imaging intracellular calcium during neutrophil phagocytosis, and eventually developed a keen interest in computational modeling of immune cell deformations. I now am focused on computational work in Dr. Padmini Rangamani's lab, developing coupled models of cell mechanics and cell signaling. I am excited to share my experience at the BPS meeting this year, focusing on highlighting presentations that integrate both computational and experimental work.
John Janetzko
I received my Honors BSc in Chemistry from the University of Toronto in 2011, with a focus on synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry. Following this, I pursued graduate studies in Chemistry at Harvard University. At Harvard, I worked in the labs of Drs. Daniel Kahne and Suzanne Walker (Harvard Medical School) studying the structure and function of an essential human enzyme, O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT). My Ph.D. work focused on understanding the mechanism of an enigmatic moonlighting function of OGT that had been described only a year earlier. Over the course of my graduate work, I gained experience with structural mass spectrometry and protein crystallography, which shaped my interest in understanding how protein dynamics are linked to function. To further develop these ideas, I joined the lab of Dr. Brian Kobilka at Stanford University at the end of 2017 for postdoctoral work. There, I’ve been working towards understanding the molecular basis of G protein-coupled receptor desensitization and trafficking. My postdoc work has made use of several techniques including various mass spectrometry approaches, single particle cryo-EM and single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy. Later in 2024 I will be joining the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. Besides research, I am passionate about teaching, science communication and making research more inclusive and welcoming. Outside of the lab, I am an avid bike racer, an occasional cycling coach, and I enjoy spending time with my wife, son, and Bernedoodle.
Soumyajit Karmakar
I am Soumyajit Karmakar, a passionate, dedicated, and hardworking person who likes to apply computational methods innovatively in biophysics, chemistry, and other computationally intensive areas. A science lover, passionate about poetry, huge fan of Richard Feynman and always on the way to be a good human being.
Gregory Kyro
My name is Gregory Kyro, and I am a Chemistry PhD student at Yale where I develop AI models and statistical methods for applications in drug discovery and protein engineering.
Lei Shen
I am a postdoc associate in Dr. Elizabeth Jonas lab of Yale University. I am interested in the role of mitochondrial ion channels in bipolar disorder patients’ cortical neurons. Mitochondrial ion channels have been implicated in the regulation of neurotransmitter release and neuronal excitability, which are known to be dysregulated in bipolar disorder. I am using mitochondrial membrane electrophysiology and electron microscopy to study mitochondrial ion channels and their role in alterations in mitochondrial bioenergetics. Prior to joining Jonas lab, I studied glucose and lipid metabolism in liver diseases, mainly focusing on hepatic steatosis.
I also studied mitochondrial dynamics for my graduate studies. I applied a method of mitochondrial thermometry based on Rhodamine B methyl ester, which equilibrates as a thermosensitive mixture of nonfluorescent and fluorescent resonance forms. Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) is released from hepatic non-parenchymal Kupffer cells and acts as an inflammatory factor to impact various functions of hepatocytes. The activity of PGE2 on energy mechanism of hepatocytes has not been fully elucidated and in particular, which PGE2 receptor mediates the functions has been elusive. I identified EP4 as the major receptor of PGE2 via the mitochondrion-thermometry approach and then substantiated this receptor's role in hepatic metabolism.
Outside lab, I enjoy writing about my thoughts about science and careers. I also like traveling.
Tomasz Skóra
I am a postdoctoral research associate in Bidone’s lab at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, University of Utah. In 2023, I earned my doctoral degree in Chemistry from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw, Poland). My dissertation concerned computer simulations of diffusion and chemical reactions in macromolecularly crowded environments resembling biological cells. Currently, my research at the University of Utah involves harnessing coarse-grained simulations to study slow biological processes, with a particular focus on the dynamic instability of microtubules and integrin activation. I am passionate about exploring the interface between computational chemistry, statistical physics, and life sciences to unravel complex biological phenomena.
I am a Biophysics PhD candidate at UW-Madison. I work under Philip Romero applying artificial intelligence to interesting protein engineering projects. My thesis work applies machine learning and deep learning methods to enzyme and pathway engineering to provide green chemistry solutions for alternative fuel production. Other topics of interests are AI ethics, high-throughput screens, extrapolation principles for modeling, and approaches to blend biophysical information with learned aspects of the protein fitness landscape. To this end, I help co-organize the global ML4Proteins seminar series. I am heavily involved in a PhD minor in life science communication and enjoys science writing across many blogs and mediums. In my spare time, I enjoy singing, camping, and playing with my cat, Ron Weasley.
Haneul Yoo
Hello, my name is Haneul and I’m a postdoc from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics (MPI-IE) in Freiburg, Germany. I consider myself as a protein biochemist, but I was always exposed to biophysicists throughout my academic training. When I was an undergraduate, I shared my lab office with a physics postdoc who loved teaching and talking about cool papers in biophysics (like collective motion of moshers at heavy metal concerts). In graduate school, I met so many wonderful people from biophysics who taught me and inspired me that biophysics became my second favorite science next to biochemistry. So, after getting my PhD in biochemistry in the United States, I moved to Germany to join the newly established department of Biological Physics at the MPI-IE, where I study transient molecular interactions in living cells using super-resolution microscopy. This is my second time attending the BPS meeting (I’m happy to return!) and I am excited to share my experiences at this year’s meeting as a guest blogger.