Biophysics

About

The Biophysics Program is an interdisciplinary degree-granting program that has faculty in 13 departments over three schools or colleges across the Grounds of the University of Virginia. The faculty and their trainees conduct research in a wide range of areas relevant to basic biological phenomena as well as human health, while sharing common ground in the use of quantitative approaches that emphasize chemistry, computation, mathematics and physics.

Program Faculty

  • Ai, Huiwang

    Molecular Biosensors; Spatiotemporal Regulation of Biological Signaling; Protein Engineering for Imaging, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics

  • Bekiranov, Stefan

    Physical Modeling of Microarray Hybridization; Analysis of Genomic Tiling Array Data; Bioinformatics; Computational Biology; Regulatory Networks

  • Bourne, Philip E

    Data Science

  • Bushweller, John H.

    Drug Development Targeting Transcription Drivers in Cancer; Structure/Function Studies of Transcription Factor Drivers in Cancer

  • Cafiso, David S.

    Molecular Mechanisms for Membrane Transport and Cell Signaling

  • Columbus, Linda

    Biophysical Chemistry: Membrane protein structure, function, and dynamics

  • Derewenda, Zygmunt S.

    Structure-function relationships in proteins

  • DuBay, Kateri

    The design of self-assembling nanomaterials

  • Ebrahim, Seham

    Cytoskeletal architecture, dynamics and roles in cellular physiology and disease; High-resolution live cell and tissue imaging

  • Egelman, Edward H.

    Structure and Function of Macromolecular Complexes Using Electron Microscopy

  • Ford, Roseanne M.

    Bacterial attachment and biofilms, microbial transport in porous media

  • Gahlmann, Andreas

    Super-resolution fluorescence imaging of bacterial cells

  • Guler, Jennifer

    Mechanisms of Genetic and Metabolic Adaptation in the Malaria Parasite, Plasmodium falciparum

  • Holmes, Jeffrey W.

    Healing after myocardial infarction, cardiac growth and remodeling, and image-based modeling and diagnosis.

  • Hsu, Ku-Lung

    Chemical Biology, Lipid Biochemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, and Mass Spectrometry

  • Hunt, Donald F.

    Analytical Biochemistry

  • Isakson, Brant

    Translating our discoveries in the microcirculation to tangible benefits in patients.

  • Jomaa, Ahmad

    Localisation of nascent proteins to sub-cellular compartments

  • Kasson, Peter M.

    Physical mechanisms of infectious disease; influenza infection; membrane fusion; antibiotic resistance; molecular dynamics simulation; machine learning.

  • Kelly, Kimberly

    Advancement in the design of imaging agents; molecular imaging and radiological sciences.

  • Kundu, Bijoy

    Positron Emission Tomography Imaging of Remodeling of Myocardial Glucose Metabolism in Pressure Overload Left Ventricular Hypertrophy

  • Landers, James P.

    Bioanalytical Chemistry on Microchips

  • Levental, Ilya

    Composition, Biophysics and Physiology of Cellular Membranes

  • Minor, Wladek

    Structure-Function Relationships in Macromolecules; Infectious Diseases and Drug Discovery; Bioinformatics and Big Data; Scientific Reproducibility

  • Nakamoto, Robert K.

    Structure-Function of Active Transporters

  • Papin, Jason A.

    Systems biology, infectious disease, cancer, toxicology, metabolic engineering

  • Pearson, William R.

    Protein Evolution; Computational Biology

  • Peirce-Cottler, Shayn M.

    Tissue Engineering and Regeneration, Computational Systems Biology, Vascular Growth and Remodeling, Stem Cell Therapies

  • Pornillos, Owen

    Structure and assembly of HIV, virus/host interactions, structural biology of the innate immune system

  • Redemann, Stefanie

    Chromosome segregation and aneuploidy in meiosis and mitosis

  • Saucerman, Jeffrey J.

    Roles of complex signaling networks involved in the regulation of cardiovascular function and disease

  • Sheynkman, Gloria M.

    Proteoform Systems Biology: proteogenomic approaches to uncover the role of proteomic variation in human disease

  • Somlyo, Avril V.

    Novel signal transduction pathways in smooth muscles that regulate contractility and impact diseases of the vasculature, airway and gastrointestinal tract.

  • Sonkusare, Swapnil

    Identify the calcium signaling abnormalities that lead to vascular dysfunction and blood pressure elevation in cardiovascular disorders

  • Stukenberg, P. Todd

    Mechanisms of chromosome segregation in Mitosis and generation of Chromosomal Instability in tumors

  • Swami, Nathan

    Molecular and bioelectric devices; tissue regeneration.

  • Tamm, Lukas K.

    Biomembrane Structure and Function; Cell Entry of Enveloped Viruses; Neurosecretion by Exocytosis; Structure of Bacterial Pathogen Membrane Proteins; Lipid-Protein Interactions

  • Venton, B. Jill

    Analytical Neurochemistry; Dopamine and Serotonin Neurotransmission in Drosophila; Mechanisms of rapid adenosine signaling in rodents

  • Wiener, Michael C.

    Structure/function of integral membrane proteins; structural biophysics; enzymology and virology of ZMPSTE24; sparse-constraint structure determination; technology development

  • Yeager, Mark

    Cardiac Gap Junction Membrane Channels / Integrins Water Channels / Rotavirus / Reovirus / Retrovirus

  • Zimmer, Jochen

    Transport of biopolymers across biological membranes with a particular interest in polysaccharide and protein translocation.