Stanford Chemistry Department welcomes three new faculty members: Grant Rotskoff, Fang Liu, and Steven Banik
By Leanne M. Rodriguez
The Department of Chemistry at Stanford looks forward to welcoming three talented new faculty members for the 2020-2021 academic year. Grant Rotskoff will join the department this summer from the Courant Institute at New York University (NYU), followed by Fang Liu from Columbia University in the fall, and Steven Banik from Stanford University in early 2021.
Associate Professor of Chemistry Tom Markland, who chaired this year's faculty search, commented, “It's fantastic that we have been able to bring three stellar new faculty to the department covering a diverse range of fields of chemistry: physical, theoretical and chemical biology. The tools that Fang, Steven and Grant provide will offer unique and ground-breaking directions for scientific research in our department and I am certain our students will enjoy learning from and discussing science with them just as much as I did during the search process.”
Grant Rotskoff’s Path to Stanford Chemistry
Theoretical chemist and mathematician Grant Rotskoff completed his undergraduate degree in Mathematics at the University of Chicago, followed by a PhD at UC Berkeley, and postdoctoral research at the Courant Institute at NYU.
He is thrilled to join the department and feels a great sense of understanding and appreciation for his theoretical chemistry research amongst his new colleagues. He stated, “At Stanford I get a sense that people really appreciate that theoretical chemistry is about understanding rather than modeling. It’s really about developing theories to explain things.” Rotskoff also looks forward to future collaborations at Stanford in chemistry as well as outside the department.
Throughout his undergraduate studies in mathematics, Rotskoff maintained his interest in chemistry as he researched the molecular dynamics of proteins. Today, he loves that chemistry is an expansive and purely academic topic that offers a lot of intellectual diversity. “I like that it’s such a broad subject where one can work on so many different types of problems but still have this common language of chemistry with people that are working on problems that are so different from what I work on. We still have the ability to communicate and help each other and work on problems from very different angles that would be impossible for either of us to solve individually,” he noted.
He plans to focus his group on machine learning and methods for nonequilibrium simulation, optimization, and control. “My postdoc has largely been about trying to quantify errors and develop techniques that allow us to do things like enhance sampling using machine learning approaches, so that will be a big focus of my group,” and further, “the vision is to use modern techniques in applied mathematics – so not only machine learning, but tools from high-dimensional statistics…to push the envelope of what we can do in terms of controlling and designing nonequilibrium systems with a focus on applications in biophysics,” Rotskoff explained.
A Bright Future for Fang Liu
After pursuing her undergraduate degree at Peking University in Beijing, Fang Liu moved to University of Pennsylvania for her PhD, and most recently, pursued her postdoctoral research at Columbia University. The physical chemist is excited to become a part of the innovative atmosphere at Stanford where she hopes to collaborate with others and push the frontiers of science. She noted, “[Stanford] creates a really open environment for people to have the freedom to try different, new ideas, no matter how crazy the ideas are. It encourages risk taking which I think is really important for any breakthroughs in science.”
She looks forward to starting her lab at Stanford from one particular project she worked on during her postdoctoral research. She developed a method to exfoliate super large single crystal monolayer semiconductors and used them to create artificial structures like atomically thin p-n junctions to study light-induced dynamics.
“My future lab will extend this area and work on fabrication and light induced control of a variety of low dimensional solid material and artificial structures. We will explore the unique static and dynamical properties, including electronic, magnetic and photonic properties...The research projects will provide participating students with broad interdisciplinary training across physics, chemistry, and materials science,” Liu explained.
Chemistry has helped Liu understand the world around her, which is why she is so passionate about it now. She stated, “It can help you understand why ice is slippery, why metal is shiny, why fire is hot and bright, how lamps work, and how plastics are made...Once you learn more about it, you can view everyday life from a different perspective, which I think is really a lot of fun.”
Steven Banik Staying at Stanford
Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Steven Banik continued the family tradition of attending University of Wisconsin—Madison for his undergraduate degree. Next, he attended Harvard University for graduate school, and then began his postdoctoral research in Carolyn Bertozzi’s lab at Stanford. He is thrilled to be able to work with the talented chemistry graduate students and faculty he’s seen at Stanford for the last three years and will also be a part of ChEM-H, an interdisciplinary research center that brings together researchers in different fields to understand life at a molecular level and apply that knowledge to improving human health.
Throughout his postdoc, he has worked broadly in an area that is aimed at engineering how cells control proteins. He noted that his postdoc has been centered around “thinking about ways that we can use the machinery that the cell possesses to accomplish a task, and basically rewiring the cellular circuitry to have some benefit – in this case, deleting specific proteins that could be pathogenic or disease-causing.”
Banik plans to build on these ideas in his lab. “I’d like to focus my lab on thinking about how we can precisely manipulate the biological machines that we possess in our cells and how we can ask them to do new things that they’re not doing right now, or how we can perturb them in a way that teaches us something about how a cell is behaving,” he said.
Banik is excited to join the chemical biology and organic chemistry faculty and focus on bringing together chemistry and cell biology. Since Bertozzi’s lab was recently relocated to the ChEM-H Building, he looks forward to occupying the vacated lab space in the Keck Science Building where he will sit in his advisor’s former office.
Keith Hodgson, Chemistry Department Chair and Professor of Chemistry and of Photon Science, remarked that, "We are remarkably fortunate to have three new junior faculty colleagues joining us over this coming academic year. Collectively they bring new research perspectives and add considerable academic and teaching strengths in our theory, experimental physical and chemical biology programs. Our recruitment of these talented young faculty was strongly supported by the H&S Deans and for one of them a key partnership with ChEM-H and the new Innovative Medicines Accelerator. We look forward to their joining our Chemistry Community!"