We are happy to present two keynote speakers for next year’s Frontiers in Membrane Protein Dynamics conference:
Our first speaker is Robert Stroud, Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California at San Francisco. At the Stroud lab, scientists seek to understand molecular mechanisms of certain key biological processes, as well as signal transduction between processes at the level of protein structure, dynamics, and mechanism. In addition to his posting at UCSF, Dr. Stroud is also the director of the Membrane Protein Expression Center, one of the centers funded by the NIH Common Fund Structural Biology Program. The MPEH develops and applies the latest innovative methods yielding structurally and functionally intact eukaryotic membrane proteins for drug development, and structural and functional characterization.
Our second keynote speaker is one of our very own Consortium members: Klaus Schulten, Swanlund Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Professor Schulten is a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute and directs the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group. His professional interests are theoretical physics and theoretical biology. His current research focuses on the structure and function of supramolecular systems in the living cell, and on the development of non-equilibrium statistical mechanical descriptions and efficient computing tools for structural biology. Professor Schulten is a leader in the field of computational biophysics, having devoted over 40 years to establishing the physical mechanisms underlying processes and organization in living systems from the atomic to the organism scale. Schulten is a strong proponent of the use of simulations as a “computational microscope”, to augment experimental research, and to lead to discoveries that could not be made through experiments so far. The molecular dynamics and structure analysis programs NAMD and VMD, born and continuously developed in his group, are used today by many thousands of researchers across the world.
Additionally, the names of the eight sessions that will comprise the bulk of the meeting have been announced as well. A final list of speakers is being finalized, but we are able to confirm the following list of speakers:
Chris Ahern, University of Iowa
Ivet Bahar, University of Pittsburgh
Francisco Bezanilla, University of Chicago
Scott Blanchard, Weill Cornell Medical College
Paula Booth, Bristol University
Olga Boudker, Weill Cornell Medical College
Charlie Brooks, University of Michigan
William Catterall, University of Washington
Yifan Cheng, University of California at San Francisco
Cindy Czajkowski, University of Wisconsin
James Chu, Harvard University
Carol Deutsch, University of Pennsylvania
Karen Fleming, Johns Hopkins University
Claudio Grosman, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Suzi Jarvis, University College Dublin
Anthony Kossiakoff, University of Chicago
Peter Larsson, University of Miami
Eric Lindhal, Stockholm University
Hassane Mchaourab, Vanderbilt University
Dan Minor, University of California at San Francisco
Emil Pai, University of Toronto
Eduardo Perozo, University of Chicago
Benoit Roux, University of Chicago
Kenton Swartz, NINDS
Emad Tajkhorshid, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
David Thomas, University of Minnesota
Doug Tobias, University of California at Irvine
The tentative schedule with scientific sessions is as follows:
DAY 1: Wednesday, May 7th
First keynote lecture: Robert Stroud, UCSF
DAY 2: Thursday, May 8th
Session 1: Role of dynamics in protein stability and function
Session 2: Diverse structural approaches
Session 3: Energy coupling in transporters
Session 4: Conformational pathways
DAY 3: Friday, May 9th
Session 5: Structure and dynamics of divalent ion channels
Session 6: Breaking the millisecond barrier
Session 7: Voltage sensing across the membrane
Session 8: Movement in ligand-gated channels
Second keynote lecture: Klaus Schulten, UIUC
