Faculty in Drexel’s Department of Physics are conducting biophysics research in a number of exciting areas. Learn more about current biophysics research areas below.

Biophysics Research Topics

• Dynamics of Biomolecules
• Force Transduction in Muscle
• Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Phase Transitions in Biology
• Protein Folding and Self-Assembly
• Systems biology and bio-networks
• Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy

Faculty Conducting Research in Biophysics

	Contact	Specialization
	Luis Cruz Cruz Associate Professor Disque Hall 912 ccruz@drexel.edu	Spiking Neural Networks; Synchronization in the firings of Neuronal Networks; Micro/Minicolumns in the brain; Brain Plasticity; Traveling Waves in Low Dimensional Neuronal Networks; Spatial correlations of neurons in the brain; Confinement effects on the folding of amyloidogenic proteins
	Frank A. Ferrone Professor Disque Hall, room 922 fferrone@drexel.edu	Sickle cell; protein self-assembly theory; molecular crowding; novel optical methods; microscopy; kinetics
	Brigita Urbanc Professor; Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies 3141 Chestnut Street, 12-909, Philadelphia, PA 19104 bu25@drexel.edu	Intrinsically disordered proteins; Biophysics of protein folding and self-assembly relevant to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease; Protein-protein and protein-lipid interactions; Discrete and all-atom molecular dynamics; Molecular dynamics force field development
	Jian-Min Yuan Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics Disque Hall 819B yuanjm@drexel.edu	Biophysics, protein folding/unfolding, protein aggregation, cellular signaling pathways, stochastic dynamics; chemical physics, reaction dyanmics, nonlinear dynamics, interaction of radiation with matter

Current Biophysics Research Projects

• Alzheimer's Disease Research
• Biophysics of Proteins and Membranes
• Protein Assembly

Biophysics Research Facilities

• Biomanipulation and Microscopy Laboratories: Four optical tables and six research grade microscopes are configured to perform microscopic spectroscopy and manipulation on solutions and individual cells. A spatial light modulator allows spatial patterns to be encoded on samples and explored; all microscopes are temperature-controlled with state-of-the-art cameras, including a 2,000 frame-per-second high-speed system. Each optical table is also equipped with high power lasers for photolysis or fluorescence spectroscopy.
• Microfluidic attachments are available for use, and a small microfluidic fabrication facility has also been established.
• The fluorescence microscope resolves fast biomolecular dynamics in living cells.
• The Computational Biophysics Facility also includes two Beowulf clusters (44-node dual-core Xeon, 43-node dual quad-core Xeon [344 cores]), 24 TB RAID disk server, and 10 Linux workstations connected through a gigabit network.