Physical Chemistry Seminar: Professor Gregory Voth, The University of Chicago
About the Seminar
"Insights and Surprises from Multiscale Simulation: And the Example of the HIV-1 Virus"
Thirty five years ago I become very interested in “multiscale” problems in molecular science. These problems are characterized by several (three or more) coupled scales. I recognized that the theoretical basis to treat such problems was not very well stablished. My group thus pursued “bottom-up” advances in theoretical and computational methodology that were designed to study complex (biomolecular and other soft matter) systems across those multiple length and time scales. This bottom-up approach has provided a systematic connection between all-atom (AA) molecular interactions, coarse-grained (CG) modeling, and mesoscopic phenomena. However, the more general presentation in this lecture will not focus as much on the detained theoretical concepts underlying this research, but instead on several key biomolecular applications; for example membrane remodeling by proteins and key steps in the HIV-1 virus lifecycle. Our approach to these problems has revealed key aspects of the behavior involving thousands of proteins and billions of atoms, something that I never thought to be possible. (By the way, if you’re not a biologist neither am I, so don’t worry, you’ll likely understand that part.)
About the Speaker
Gregory A. Voth is the Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He is also a Professor of the James Franck Institute and the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. He received a Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1987 and was an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 1987-89. Professor Voth is a leader in the development and application of theoretical and computational methods to study problems involving the structure and dynamics of complex condensed phase systems, including proteins, membranes, liquids, and materials. He is the author or co-author of approximately 700 peer-reviewed scientific articles that have been cited approximately 70,000 times with a current h-index of 131. Voth is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, The Biophysical Society, The Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received a number of awards and other forms of recognition for his work, including most recently the American Chemical Society National Award in Theoretical Chemistry, the Carolyn Cohen Innovation Award from the Biophysical Society, the S.F. Boys-A. Rahman Award for Outstanding Innovative Research in Computational Chemistry from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the National Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical and Experimental Chemistry of Liquids from the American Chemical Society, the ACS Division of Physical Chemistry Award in Theoretical Chemistry, and Election to the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. Voth has mentored and helped to place more than 225 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students and had more than 100 experimental collaborators.