Members

Title: Professor, Physics and Astronomy; Chemistry and Biochemistry

Ed received his Ph.D. in physics from Virginia Tech, where he studied nonequilibrium critical phenomena with Beate Schmittmann. He then did a post-doc in the Department of Computational Biology at the University of Pittsburgh with Dan Zuckerman. While in Pittsburgh he focused on methods development for biomolecular simulation, with an emphasis on statistically rigorous approaches for sampling protein conformation space. He then moved to Salt Lake City, UT, where he joined the lab of Greg Voth. In Utah he worked on membrane protein simulation and multiscale simulation methods development. He joined the faculty at the University of Delaware in January 2011 with a primary appointment in Physics and Astrophysics and a secondary appointment in Chemistry and Biochemistry. He was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in May 2017.

Title: Post doc fellow

Shea joined the group in 2019, passed his written candidacy exam in physics on his first try, and then crushed his oral candidacy exam the following year. He is developing computational methods to measure membrane viscosity and dynamic response in simulations. He defended his PhD in May 2024, and is spearheading a collaboration with Alexei Kananenka @ UD on computational 2D-IR measurements.

Research Projects: 

Membrane dynamics

Title: Post doc researcher

Jingjing joined the group in August 2024. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Syracuse under the direction of Shikha Nangia. She worked on many projects as a PhD student, including a new approach for context-dependent hydrophobicity based on simulations. 

Research Projects: 

GPCR-lipid interactions

Title: Post doc researcher

Parashara joined the group in August 2024. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Vanderbilt under the direction of Clare McCabe, developing bespoke CG models to simulate the (very atypical) membranes of skin cells. He is working on membrane asymmetry and cholesterol flip-flop with my group. He is also supported by Norm Wagner here at UD, working on simulations of semaglutide/GLP-1 like drugs.

Research Projects: 

Membrane asymmetry/GLP-1 drugs

Title: Post doc researcher

Hannah joined the group in March 2025. She received her PhD in Chemstry from West Virginia University under the direction of Balke Merz, simulating peptide-membrane interactions. Sht understand how sterols change the hydrogen bonding environment at the lipid-water interface by integrating MD simulations and 2D-IR experiments (performed in Carlos Baiz's lab at UT Austin), and on calculating how membrane composition shifts the chemical potential of cholesterol

Research Projects: 

Lipid complexity and membrane structure

Title: PhD Student, Physics and Astronomy

Sasiri received her BS in Physics from the Universidad de Valle in Calí, Colombia. She joined us as a PhD student at UD in September 2022. She is working to understand the pressure dependent elastic properties of marine invertebrate (ctenophore) membranes.

Research Projects: 

Membrane elasticity

Title: PhD Student, Physics and Astronomy

Bivek joined us as a PhD student at UD in Spring 2023. He is developing graphical neural network representations of membrane proteions for classification tasks and to develop new ways of understanding lipid-protein interactions.

Research Projects: 

Lipid protein interactions, bioinformatics of membrane proteins

Title: PhD Student, Physics and Astronomy

Diego received his BS in Physics from the Universidad de Valle in Calí, Colombia. He joined us as a PhD student at UD in September 2023. He studies membrane elastic response, with a specific focus on inelastic neutron scattering measurements.

Research Projects: 

Membrane elasticity

Title: PhD Student, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Ian received his BS in Molecular Biology from West Chester University (Pennsylvania). He worked as a scientist at Janssen Biotech and Abzyme Therapeutics in immune cell redirection, antibody Fc region engineering, and targeted drug delivery. He joined the graduate program in Chemistry and Biochemistry and our research group in fall 2024. 

Research Projects: 

Lipid-protein interactions, bioinformatics of membrane proteins