Research

Over the past half-century, life scientists have been taking exhaustive inventory of the molecular machinery of life. These painstaking efforts have been rewarded with over eighty fully sequenced genomes and many thousands of protein structures at atomic-scale resolution. As we advance into the postgenomic era, increasing attention will be paid to how these biomacromolecular players physically collaborate with one another to form a living cell, an entity which transcends the sum of its microscopic parts. Bioengineers will play a central role in this paradigm shift. Many of the areas in which bioengineers have a strong tradition of expertise, including colloid and interface science, polymer science, and nanotechnology, translate naturally to the quantitative study of cellular architecture and mechanics. Moreover, because many bioengineers focus on macromolecular chemistry and its relationship to meso- and macroscopic phenomena, they are natural leaders to develop new technologies and devices that interface with cells. Finally, many disease processes involve dysfunctional self-assembly or outright aggregation of macromolecules; the details of these interactions bear directly on pathophysiology and guide therapeutic engineering.

To contribute to this exciting intellectual revolution, we are actively pursuing several research areas:

Macromolecular biophysics of the cytoskeleton

Molecular basis of cell shape and mechanics in the nervous system

Nonspecific colloidal forces in biomacromolecular systems