Debayan Chakraborty was born in Kolkata, India. He received his Bachelors of Science degree from St. Stephens College, University of Delhi, in 2010, and Masters of Science degree from the University of Oxford in 2011. He carried out his doctoral research in the area of Theoretical Chemistry from 2012 to 2016, under the supervision of Prof. David J. Wales at the University of Cambridge. At present he is a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of Texas at Austin with Prof. Thirumalai. His current research interests include developing coarse-grained models for studying the dynamics of DNA, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), and DNA-protein interactions.

Rajsekhar grew up in West Bengal, India. He obtained his Bachelors degree in Physics from Midanpore college and then moved to Chennai for his Masters in Physics from IIT Madras. After completing his PhD from TIFR-Hyderabad under the supervision of Prof. Smarajit Karmakar he joined Prof. Thirumalai’s group.

He is interested in studying the role of various length scales on the dynamics of glass-forming liquids. His work also involves understanding the dynamic heterogeneity and relaxation processes in supercooled liquids. Currently, he is working on the effect of random pinning in Wigner glasses.

Atreya grew up in Kolkata, India. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from IISc Bangalore. At IISc he worked on molecular dynamics simulations of DNA toroids and coffee rings. Currently, he is a PhD student in Prof. Thirumalai’s group, where he is working towards understanding the principles governing human chromosome structure. In his spare time he enjoys biking around Austin and playing video games.

Davin Jeong was born and raised in South Korea. She received her B.S and M.S. in chemistry from Sogang University under the supervision of Prof. Bong June Sung. During her master’s degree, her research aimed towards understanding the structural and dynamic behaviors of a single polymer in a good solvent in a slit by employing both Molecular dynamics simulations and Langevin dynamics simulations. In the fall of 2017, she joined the Thirumalai group at the University of Texas at Austin, and is interested in structure and dynamics of chromatin in different types of cells.

Education :

M.S in Chemistry from Sogang University in 2016

B.S in Chemistry from Sogang University in 2014

Publication :

Effects of solvent and wall roughness on the dynamics and structure of a single polymer in a slit (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymer.2016.04.002)

Abhinaw grew up in India. He obtained his Integrated Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in the United States, where he worked under the guidance of Prof. Valeria Molinero. His doctoral research focused on the self-assembly of nanoparticles and the nucleation and polymorph selection of porous materials. In the Thirumalai group, he is working on intrinsically disordered proteins.

Kiran grew up in Ranchi, India. She got her Masters’ degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Dhanbad. She completed her PhD from IITB-Monash Research Academy, a joint PhD program with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India and Monash University, Australia. During her PhD, she developed a model to reconstruct the chromatin configurations under the supervision of Prof Ranjith Padinhateeri and Prof. Ravi Jagadeeshan. At present, she is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin with Prof. Dave Thirumalai. Her research interest includes studying the role of epigenetic markers in chromatin organization. 

Xin grew up in Hubei Province where he spent four years attending Wuhan University. He then moved to the Institute of Theoretical Physics, CAS, Beijing where he received his PhD degree in 2010.  From 2006 to 2012, Xin lived in Germany working with Prof. Lipowsky and Prof. Kierfeld before attending Rice University working with Prof. Kolomeisky.  He is currently a Postdoc  in Prof. Thirumalai’s research group at the University of Texas at Austin. Xin’s research focuses on cytoskeleton assembly, collective motion of molecular motors, network dynamics and evolution of cancers.

Education:

• PhD in Physics, Institute of theoretical physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2010

Publications:

Actin Polymerization and Depolymerization Coupled to Cooperative Hydrolysis

Mechanisms and topology determination of complex chemical and biological network systems from first-passage theoretical approach

Bifurcation of Velocity Distributions in Cooperative Transport of Filaments by Fast and Slow Motors

Hiranmay was born and brought up in India. He did his PhD in the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India under the guidance of Prof. Govardhan Reddy. Currently, he is a postdoctoral research scholar in Prof. Thirumalai’s group at University of Texas at Austin. His research interests primarily lie in the area of computational biophysics especially in the field of structure and dynamics of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and folding of chromosome in cell.

Balaka grew up in Durgapur, India. She received her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Presidency College, Calcutta University in 2012. She completed her master’s degree and PhD from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. During her PhD, she studied different aspects of protein folding and aggreagation using coarse-grained models under the supervision of Prof. Govardhan Reddy. At present she is a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of Texas at Austin with Prof. Thirumalai. Her current research focuses on understanding sequence specificity and role of ions on DNA mechanics.

I got my PhD at Rutgers University, NJ in 2015 working with Prof. David Case. My thesis studied solvent and ion distributions around biomolecules using molecular dynamics simulation and integral equation theory (3D-RISM). I developed a theory to extract solvent and ion distribution from X-ray scattering data, revealing important differences between monovalent and divalent ion distributions around nucleic acids. Furthermore, these experimentally extracted solvent distribution could open a new way to calibrate biomolecular force fields.

I joined Prof. Dave Thirumalai’s group at UT Austin, TX as a postdoc in 2016. Here, I started working on the RNA folding problem, particularly how divalent ions (Mg2+, Ca2+) drive RNA folding. I developed a theory of divalent ion-phosphate interaction based on RISM. The new ion-phosphate potential, once incorporated into an accurate coarse-grained RNA force field, reproduced the divalent ion-dependent thermodynamics of RNA folding. The theory also provided the mechanism of how cations bind to phosphate groups in RNA using either inner shell or outer shell coordination.

I have recently turned my interest into the liquid-liquid phase separation problem, where RNA molecules with repeated sequence, such as (CAG)n and (CUG)n, phase separate into two liquid phases with different densities under certain circumstances. I developed a coarse-grained model, which reproduced the dependence of the phase separation on the chain length and monomer density. The aim here is to use simulations to understand the mechanism at the molecular level of the liquid-liquid phase separation.

Sucheol, born and raised in South Korea, came to the US for his undergraduate study in UC Berkeley. After completing his bachelor degree, and subsequently his national service in Korea, he joined the chemistry graduate program at MIT. Under supervision of Prof. Adam Willard, he studied liquid water interfaces and hydration properties for his doctoral thesis. Specifically, he developed a theoretical model capable of predicting molecular structure of a water interface based on statistical mechanics of hydrogen bonds. Using this model, he identified the significant effects of non-ideal hydrogen bonding structures on the dielectric properties of air–water interface. He also developed a computational framework that can characterize hydration properties based on water’s interfacial molecular structure. This general framework is useful for elucidating microscopic details about the hydration dynamics behind complex biomolecular phenomena. 

After finishing his PhD, Sucheol joined the research group of Prof. Thirumalai in UT Austin. His postdoctoral research is focused on the structure–dynamics–function relationship of a genome. He is currently studying non-equilibrium effects of transcriptional activity on chromosome organization and dynamics using coarse-grained polymer simulations. He is also interested in how other important nuclear activities, such as DNA repair and chromatin remodeling, render the physical and functional properties of chromosome.

For the up-to-date research, please check out his personal website.