Chengxi (Ace) Yang

Graduate Research Student

Ace received his B.S. in bioinformatics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) in 2022. He worked with Prof. Bao-ting Zhu on inflammatory drug design and with Prof. Gui-juan Cheng on nickel-catalyzed hydrocyanation. He also worked with Prof. Yun-Dong Wu on palladium/norbornene catalysis at Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. He joined UChicago and the Voth group in Fall 2022.

Da Teng

Graduate Research Student

Da Teng received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Peking University in 2019. At Peking University, he worked on various cheminformatics methods to predict ligand-protein interaction under Professor Luhua Lai. In 2018, Da Teng joined the Voth group as a visiting summer student and worked on proton transport across a CIC channel. In 2019, he joined the Voth Group as a full-time graduate student, and he will be working on various coarse-graining topics.

Dovydas Vasiliauskas

Graduate Student
Department of Chemistry
The University of Chicago
vasiliauskas@uchicago.edu

Hezhou Zhang

Graduate Research Student

Hezhou received his B.S. in chemistry at UCLA in 2022. He worked with Prof. Daniel Neuhauser on stochastic realization of exciton coupling for molecular aggregates. He joined UChicago and the Voth group in Fall 2022.

Jeri Beiter

Graduate Research Student

Jeri Beiter received her B.S. in chemistry from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2018, with minors in math and chemical engineering. While at RIT, she worked on a number of projects, including using electronic structure theory to study the properties of aluminum nanoclusters and modeling the heat transfer of solar thermal systems. During the summer of 2018, Jeri was a NSF-REU awardee at the University of Chicago where she worked with the Vaikuntanathan group studying how energy input biasing influences single particles via molecular dynamics simulations. In the spring of 2019, Jeri worked with Dr. Hakim Iddir of Argonne National Laboratory to analyze the effects of dopants in cathodes for lithium ion batteries using ab initio molecular dynamics. She has been a member of the Voth group since the fall of 2019 and is interested in studying the biophysics of membranes and membrane proteins using molecular dynamics and coarse-grained simulations.

Jiangbo Wu

Graduate Research Student

Jiangbo Wu received his B.S. in Material Chemistry from Peking University (PKU) in 2020. At PKU, he worked on the various surface properties of Anodic Aluminum Oxide (AAO) template under the supervision of Prof. Kai Wu. Jiangbo got enrolled in the Chemistry Doctoral Program at the University of Chicago in the Fall of 2020. He is currently working as a graduate student in the Voth group to study coarse-graining topics.

Jong Ho Choi

Graduate Research Student

Jong Ho Choi joined the group in 2022. He received B.S. in chemistry (in 2020) and M.S. in chemistry (in 2022) at Sogang University, Seoul, Korea. He studied polymer systems with various methods including CG MD simulations, AA MD simulations, ab initio MD simulations, and machine learning with Prof. Bong June Sung. In Voth’s group, he is studying bio-molecules.

Kuntal Ghosh

Graduate Research Student

I hail from the city of Kolkata, India. I did my BSc (Honours) in Chemistry from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata in 2019 and completed my MSc in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2021. During my Bachelor’s, I worked with Prof. Pinaki Chaudhury (University of Calcutta) and Dr Rahul Sharma (St. Xavier’s College) on the development of stochastic optimisation techniques to locate saddle points and to trace out isomerisation pathways in ionic clusters. For my Master’s project, I worked with Prof. Nisanth N Nair on the application of the Multiple Time Step algorithm to speed up electrostatic calculations in QM/MM simulations. In the Voth group, I will be working on the development of coarse-grained models. 

A detailed look into my work can be found on my Google Scholar page. 

Manish Gupta

Graduate Research Student

I grew up in the city of Kolkata which is also hailed as the cultural capital of India and completed my undergraduate at the Presidency University majoring in chemistry. I moved to IIT KGP for my Master’s studies and worked under Prof. Amit Basak on the design of inhibitors against multidrug-resistant Metallo beta-lactamases. In the Voth group, I am interested in using coarse-grained and all-atom molecular dynamics to study the self-assembly of HIV-1 viral capsid.

Patrick Sahrmann

Graduate Research Student

Patrick Sahrmann received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Auburn University in 2019. While at Auburn, Patrick investigated the catalytic mechanism of a peroxide-degrading enzyme via molecular dynamics and density functional calculations. Patrick joined the Voth group in Fall 2019. His current research is focused on the application of ultra-coarse grained methodology to multi-component lipid bilayers.

Sheng (Thomas) Qu

Graduate Research Student

Sijia Chen

Graduate Research Student

Tamsuk Paul 

Graduate Research Student

I was born and raised in the city of Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta) and completed my B.Sc in Chemistry from the University of Calcutta. Then I went on to pursue my M.Sc at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IITKgp) where I worked with Dr. Sabyashachi Mishra on my M.Sc thesis project when I learned the classical Molecular Dynamics simulations. Currently, I am interested in Theoretical Biophysics which I am going to pursue in the Voth lab.

Weizhi Xue

Graduate Student
Department of Chemistry
The University of Chicago
weizhixue@uchicago.edu

Arpa Hudait 

Research Professional

Arpa earned his Bachelor’s degree from University of Calcutta in 2009 and Master’s degree from IIT Guwahati in 2011, both in chemistry. He started his Ph.D in chemistry at University of Utah in Fall 2012. In his Ph.D working with Prof. Valeria Molinero, the primary focus was to investigate nucleation and growth of ice, and molecular mechanism of ice-binding proteins. He graduated from University of Utah in December 2018 and joined as postdoctoral researcher in the Voth group at University of Chicago in February 2019. In the Voth group, Arpa will be working on HIV budding and maturation.

Ayan Majumder

I am from Kolkata, India. I completed my BSc at Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, and my MSc at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. I completed my PhD at Boston University working with John Straub. In the Straub group, I studied protein homodimerization in membrane bilayers. I joined the Voth group in September 2024, where I am working on developing multiscale models to study biological complexes.

Curt Waltmann

CCTCh Fellow

Curt received his B.S. degree in Materials Engineering from Iowa State University in 2018 where he studied the interactions of hydrocarbon coated nanoparticles with Alex Travesset. He completed his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University in 2023 in the lab of Monica Olvera. His work focused on the assembly and mechanical properties of complex macromolecular systems including proteins and/or polymers. In the Voth group, Curt hopes to use multi-scale coarse graining techniques to study kinetic processes in the HIV life cycle.

Debaleen Biswas

Research Professional and Manager

Debaleen Biswas, born in Krishnanagar, West Bengal, India in 1989, is a passionate researcher. He earned his B.Sc. (Hons.) in Physics from Abhedananda Mahavidyalaya, under The University of Burdwan in 2009. Furthering his education, he completed his M.Sc. in Physics at the University of Calcutta in 2011 and obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the same institution in 2017. Dr. Biswas’s research journey began at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, focusing on semiconductor device fabrication and simulations. He received a doctoral research fellowship from the Department of Atomic Energy, Govt. of India. He later joined Nagoya Institute of Technology (NITech), Japan in 2018 as a Postdoctoral Researcher, specializing in GaN-based high-power and high-frequency device applications. He has published extensively and holds patents for his innovative creations. Beyond research activities, Dr. Biswas contributed as a visiting faculty member at Techno India University, Kolkata.

Bohak Yoon

Research Profesional

Bohak received his B.S. and Ph.D. in 2016 and 2022, respectively, both in Chemical Engineering. During his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, he worked on first-principles studies on thermal and oxidative degradation and corrosion of aqueous amine solvents for carbon dioxide capture using ab initio molecular dynamics with advanced sampling methods. Bohak joined the Voth group as a postdoctoral scholar in July 2022. His research interests are in the multiscale theory and simulation of ionic liquids and other aqueous systems pertinent to alternative energy, new materials, and separations.

Korbinian Liebl

CCTCh Fellow

Korbinian studied Physics at the Technical University of Munich, where he earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in 2014, 2016 and 2020. During his Ph.D., he studied the mechanics of DNA using Molecular Dynamics simulations and other theoretical concepts, and also parameterized a new DNA force field. Afterwards, he joined a biochemistry group to engineer new interleukine proteins for therapeutical purposes. Korbinian joined the Voth group as a postdoctoral scholar in July 2022 due to a CCTCh fellowship. His research interests lie in in the multiscale theory to simulate large-scale processes, and in the development of new simulation methods.

Kristina Hermen

Kristina received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from St. Norbert College in 2019. During this period, she was an NSF-REU fellow at the University of Utah where she worked with Prof. Valeria Molinero to study the role of the structure-directing agent on zeolite nucleation. She subsequently completed her PhD in 2024 at the University of Washington where she worked with Prof. Sotiris Xantheas. Her graduate research focused on the utility of the many-body expansion in understanding the nature of noncovalent interactions, developing accurate many-body potentials, and accelerating benchmark lattice energy calculations. In July 2024, Kristina joined the Voth group as a postdoctoral scholar. Here she will develop multi-scale coarse graining models to study complex biomolecular systems.

Mandira Dutta

Postdoctoral Scholar

I completed my Ph.D. at Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata, India. In my Ph.D., the primary focus was on the theoretical and computational investigations of molecular motor dynamics and their effects on different disease-related mutations. I obtained my Ph.D. degree in February 2020 and joined as a postdoctoral research scholar in the Voth group.

In the Voth group, I will study viral protein dynamics specially SARS-CoV2 spike, membrane, and nucleocapsid proteins, their interactions, and conformational changes of spike protein during receptor binding. I will implement both all-atom and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations and enhance sampling techniques. I will also be involved in the development of CG models using the bottom-up approach and multiscale theory methods in this context.

Sahithya Sridharan Iyer

Postdoctoral Scholar

Sahithya received her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Chemistry from Pondicherry University, India. Following which she joined Prof. Anand Srivastava’s group in Molecular Biophysics Unit at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2015. In graduate school, she studied various aspects of nanoscale heterogeneities on laterally phase-separated bio-membranes. To this end she used Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo simulation techniques and compared the observations made to experiments. In 2021, she joined as a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Huan-Xiang Zhou’s group in the University of Illinois at Chicago. In the postdoctoral stint in Zhou group, Sahithya studied the viscoelastic properties of biomolecular condensates by modelling droplet fusion and performing non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. In October 2022, Sahithya joined the Voth group. Here she will be employing multi-scale coarse graining methods to study complex biomolecular systems.

Puja Banerjee

Postdoctoral Scholar

Background: 

Puja earned her Bachelor’s degree from Jadavpur University, India in 2012, and a Master’s degree from IIT Kanpur, India in 2014, both in Chemistry. In the same year, she joined Prof. Biman Bagchi’s group in IISc, India where she has worked on protein association/dissociation processes using biased and unbiased molecular dynamics simulations, dynamics of electrolyte solutions with polyatomic ions, and the nucleation processes of polymorphic solids. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry in February 2020 and joined the Voth group in September 2020.

Research Interests: 

Puja is interested in using multi-scale methods to understand the mechanisms of large-scale viral processes and the collective behavior of macromolecules involved in viral replication and infectivity. She is currently working on the protein-protein self-assembly processes as well as protein-membrane interactions using both all-atom and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations in the systems of HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2.

Siwei Luo

Postdoctoral Scholar

Siwei received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Wuhan University in 2017, where he studied the mechanism of oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells with Prof. Shengli Chen. He was enrolled in a chemistry doctorate program under the supervision of Prof. Mark Thachuk at the University of British Columbia. His Ph.D. work focuses on developing coarse-grained models for fluid systems using projection operator theory and distribution function theory. After earning his doctoral degree at the end of 2022, he worked with Prof. Alex Wang at the University of British Columbia on optimizing the basis used in grid-free DFT while continuing the study of coarse-grained models. He joined the Voth group as a postdoc at the beginning of 2024. Siwei will work on modelling a multi-phase electron transfer process and coarse-grained dynamics of molecular systems.

Yihang Wang

Schmidt AI in Science Fellow

Yihang received his B.S. degree in Physics from the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in 2017.  He then started his Ph.D. studies in the Biophysics program at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). Advised by Prof. Pratyush Tiwary, he explored the possibility of combing AI techniques with molecular dynamics simulation to study the interaction mechanisms of (bio)molecules. As a fellow of the UMD-NCI partnership for integrative cancer research, he was in close collaboration with Dr. John Schneekloth in studying the interaction mechanism of RNA and small molecules. He was a postdoc fellow at Chicago Center for Theoretical Chemistry (CCTCh) till February 2023 and now a Schmidt AI in Science Fellow at the chemistry department.

Zhi (Shane) Yue

Research Professional

Zhi received a B.Eng. in Polymer Materials and Engineering from Wuhan University of Technology (WHUT) and a B.S. in Biology from Wuhan University in 2007. At WHUT, he worked with Dr. Hong Chen on hemocompatible biomacromolecules and received an M.Eng. in Materials in 2009. He then lectured at Hubei University of Education till 2011 and came to the United States for doctoral study. During this period, he worked with Dr. Jana Shen on proton-coupled mechanism in various biological systems using constant-pH molecular dynamics. He received Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy in 2017. He joined the Voth group in Apr 2018.

Research Interest:

May the Proton Motive Force be with you