Physical Chemistry Seminar: Professor Todd Gingrich, Northwestern University
About the Seminar
Tales of Nonequilibrium Kinetics: Molecular Motors and Reaction-Diffusion Chemistry
Chemical systems can deviate from equilibrium for a variety of reasons: because they are kinetically trapped, because they are subject to a time-varying drive, or because they are simultaneously in contact with multiple incommensurate reservoirs. This last scenario, which generates a nonequilibrium steady state (NESS), yields a stationary distribution over microstates that is not Boltzmann and that sustains currents. I will discuss parallel efforts to better understand the chemical dynamics of such steady states. I'll start by describing my group's efforts to build coarse-grained molecular motor models to give new clarity to old disputes about so-called power stroke mechanisms. I will move on to describe new tensor-network strategies for studying chemical reaction network dynamics at the level of stochastic kinetics, not just deterministic mass action. I'll give a flavor of how these methods promise to open up new avenues for studying how reaction networks respond to perturbations, of the sort one would introduce by drugging specific interactions in a signal transduction network.
About the Speaker
Todd Gingrich is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. Todd studied physical chemistry at Caltech (B.S., 2008), at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (M.Sc., 2010), and finally at the University of California, Berkeley as an NSF and Hertz Fellow (Ph.D. 2015). As a Physics of Living Systems Fellow at MIT, Todd derived the Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relationship for nonequilibrium systems. That collaborative work with Jordan Horowitz was recognized in 2019 by the American Physical Society with the Irwin Oppenheim Award. He has been recognized with an NSF CAREER award, a Sloan Fellowship, and the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award.