Soft Interfaces Laboratory

Our predominant focus lies in developing a molecular understanding of structure, dynamics and interactions that occur in a variety of soft interface systems, using a combination of molecular dynamics simulations and experiments.  Soft interfaces occur widely in nature and our current focus is on understanding the biophysics of plasma membranes, membrane-protein interactions, and small molecule interactions with bacterial membranes. Dynamics of molecules at these complex interfaces is a fascinating area of research. In addition we are interested in understanding the dynamics, structure and relaxation of small molecules confined in synthetic and biological nanopores. With the advent of super-resolution imaging techniques our laboratory attempts to connect molecular dynamics simulations with high resolution dynamic measurements to understand biological phenomenon with a focus on the plasma membrane.