Past Members

Title: Post doctoral researcher

Alison joined the group in August 2019, having just received her PhD in Biophysics at the University of Maryland, jointly mentored by Jeff Klauda (UMD) and Rich Pastor (NIH). Alison developed the ether linked lipid forcefield (plasmalogens!) and brings a depth of expertise in all-atom simulation of membranes. She was awarded an F32 Kirchstein fellowship in September 2020 to study the biophysical consequences of plasmalogens in plasma membranes. A year later, she left university life to return to a more important job at which she excels — teaching physics to high school students. 

Title: Post doctoral researcher

Liam joined the group in February 2021. He worked with Grace Brannigan (Rutgers) on lipid-protein interactions using coarse-grained models. With us he worked to understand the consequences of lipidomic diversity for GPCR function.

Title: Graduate Student

Long Chen was a graduate student in physical chemistry. He joined the group in Fall 2014. His work focused on G-protein coupled receptor function, especially G-protein coupling in the adenosine receptor subfamily.

Title: Undergraduate Researcher

Cassie was an undergraduate at UD in the Quantitative Biology program. She joined us in summer 2020, and was mentored by myself and Alison Leonard on an exciting project about the peculiar lipidomes of dep sea creatures. The work is in collaboration with Itay Budin at UCSD.

Title: Graduate Student

Swapnil joined the group at the beginning of Summer, 2015. He defended his PhD in summer 2020 (co-mentored by Björn Baumeier, TU Eindhoven), then did a short post-doc fellowship with us until Dec. 2021. After graduating he took a position as a post-doc at NIST in the group of Mike Zwolak.

Title: Graduate Student

Mitch joined the group in 2014, after finishing his BS in Physics at Rowan University. Mitch defended his PhD (co-mentored by Alex Sodt, NICHD) in the summer of 2020. After graduating he took a position as a Senior Computational Scientist at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Title: Graduate Student

John (JD) joined the group in the summer of 2016, immediately after finishing his BS in Physics at Bucknell University. JD defended a Master's thesis in the summer of 2019, and moved back to the west coast to work with Dan Zuckerman at OHSU in the Biomedical Engineering PhD program. We were *very* sorry to lose JD, but really happy that he has found a good home. UPDATE: JD won a MolSSI fellowship! Woot woot!

Title: Postdoctoral Researcher

Lewen  received his PhD in 2017 at Emory University working under the supervision of James Kindt. He spent just over two years as a post doc with us before transitioning to a more data-heavy track in informatics at the University of Florida. 

Title: Undergraduate Researcher

Eric joined the group in summer 2015 and received his PhD in Physics in 2018. Eric is PhD student in Biophysics at the University of Chicago.

Title: Undergraduate Researcher

Spencer joined the group in summer 2015 and received his PhD in Physics in 2018. Spencer is a PhD student in Physics at CU Boulder, where he tries his best to resist the temptations of the mountains when he should be studying. 

Title: Undergraduate Researcher

Spencer joined the group in summer 2014 and received his PhD in Physics in 2017. Spencer is enjoying life as a graduate student in Biophysics at Vanderbilt University, where he works on algorithms for processing biomedical imaging data. Update: Spencer won an F31 fellowship! Noooice!

Title: Postdoctoral Researcher

Clément joined the group in in February 2015, after finishing his Ph.D. in the group of Siewart-Jan Marrink at the University of Groeningen, Netherlands. During his Ph.D. Clément spent two years with us as a post-doc before moving back to the Netherlands to take for a career in data science. 

Title: Graduate student

Cesar joined the group in Fall 2011. 

PhD, Physics August 2018

Andrew joined the group in 2013. His research focused on the development of advanced algorithms for lipid bilayer simulation, with a particular emphasis on implementing algorithms for membrane hydrodynamics that exploit recent advances in hardware and supercomputing architectures.

Title: Undergraduate Researcher

Chris Gutnajer joined the group in Summer 2014 and graduated with a BS in Physics in 2016. Chris worked at the APL at Johns Hopkins after graduating, and moved to Google/Alphabet (Pittsburgh) in the Fall of 2018.

Title: Undergraduate Researcher

Byron joined the group in Summer 2014 and graduated with a BEng in electrical engineering in 2016. After graduating Byron was hired as a software engineer at JP Morgan Chase in Delaware.

Title: Postdoctoral Researcher

Ji Young was the brave first member of the Lyman group, hired as a post doc in the spring of 2011. After two years with me (during which time he published several papers), he took a position as a Research Scientist in the group of Ivet Bahar at the University of Pittsburgh.