Members of the Lab
Research Assistant Professor
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Michael Kio Ph.D. Cranfield University, United Kingdom (2015) Research Topics Dr Kio’s current research focuses on developing enhanced fouling release coating formulation. His research interests also include surface wettability and nanoparticle interaction with lipid bilayers for studies of drug delivery implementing molecular dynamics. |
Postdoctoral
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Min-Kang Hsieh Ph.D. Columbia University (2018) Research Topics Min-Kang's research focuses on two areas of interest. He is doing research on some COVID-19 associated proteins that form oligomers that are important for the virus infection and he is probing the mechanism and structure in collaboration with Dr. Berger's lab at UVA. Min-Kang is also doing work on lipid membrane asymmetry with a focus on the inner membrane of Gram Negative bacteria. |
Graduate Students
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Jessica Bodosa Ph.D. student at University of Maryland, College Park (Biophysics, 2020-) Research Topics
Jessica has been a Biophysics rotation student in the lab focusing on the dimerization of the EmrE protein. She will also be starting research on metal ion binding to cell membranes. |
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Joshua Lucker M.S./Ph.D. student at University of Maryland, College Park (Biophysics, 2020-) Research Topics
Joshua is working on extending the CHARMM36UAr model to sphingolipids and testing this force field with bilayer mixtures containing cholesterol. |
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Anthony Pane Ph.D. student at University of Maryland, College Park (Biophysics, 2021-) Research Topics
Anthony is co-Advised by Dr. Richard Pastor (NIH/NHLBI) and is working on optimizatation of the phosphoserine lipid force field as his first project. |
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Kinjal Mondal Ph.D. student at University of Maryland, College Park (Biophysics, 2022-) Research Topics
Kinjal started as a rotation student Fall 2022 and has joined the Klauda lab in Spring 2023. His work focuses on developing data on Lyase proteins to understand how these are involved in bacterial infections and how these can be used to reduce feed stock to produce chemicals. His work utilizes molecular simulation and machine learning for enzyme design. |
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Marlen Toktomamatov Ph.D. student at University of Maryland, College Park (Biochemistry, 2023-) Research Topics
Marlen started as a rotation student Spring 2024 and has joined the Klauda lab April 2024. His work currently focuses on determining the free energy of model peptide bindings to cellular membranes. |
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Evan Roetering M.S. University of Maryland (Bioengineering, 2025-) Research Topics
Evan started as a undergraduate researcher in the lab but is now a M.S. student in the Bioengineering department. His focus is on cell membrane modeling of cancer membreanes. Specifically he has been looking at developing membrane models for leukemia and understanding their biophysical properties. More recently, he has also developed model membranes for pancreatic cancer. |
Undergraduate Students
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Dai-Bao Van B.S. Chemistry (May 2021) Research Topics
Dai-Bao is working on modeling archeal membranes with ether-branched lipids as well as simulating AQP0 and its cataract forming mutants |
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Nicholas Dadzie Biochemistry Research Topics
Nicholas has been working on modeling cell membranes with a future research project TBD |
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Abhi Senthikumar Chemical Engineering Research Topics
Abhi initially worked on simulations of cancer cell membranes with Dr. Kio. He has sense focused on membrane-active peptides in collaboration with Prof. Karlsson |
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Daniel Erickson Bioengineering Research Topics
Dan is focused on developing models membranes of microglia towards interest in interactions with the Abeta-peptide and Alzheimer's Disease with Neelay. |
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Om Tailor Computer Science (Minor in Computational Finance) Research Topics
Om has been working with Kyle on collecting data and developing a machine learning model toward drug design to an ion channel protein.. |
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Arnav Srivastava Computer Science & Math Research Topics
Arnav has been working with Kinjal on developing a machine learning model for enzyme design. |
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Adam Teixeira Biochemistry Research Topics
Adam has been developing work on Alzheimer's Disease and oligomers of A-beta peptide with Cu ions. |
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Nic Kalbaugh Bioengineering Research Topics
Nic has been looking at how certain accessory proteins of SARS-CoV-2 associate (ORF7b) in a more native membrane bilayer. |
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Tanish Anandababu Computer Science Research Topics
Tanish has been working with Kyle on some machine learning topics on drug development. |
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Terra Pickett Chemical Engineering Research Topics
Terra is working on a project in collaboration with Drs. Srini Raghavan and Faraz Burni to study some unique phase behavior of polymers. |
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Rohit Chintala Biochemistry & Mathematics Research Topics
Rohit is currently finishing up the training on membrane modeling and will be starting a project soon. |
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Kamila Abdukadirova Chemistry Research Topics
Kamila is researching how a protein associated with neurons interacts and binds to cellular membranes (p35). She is using protein structural predicition methods and molecular simulations to probe membrane attachement with applications to Alzheimer's Disease. |
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Afreen Reza Bioengineering Research Topics
Afreen is currently finishing up the training on membrane modeling and will be starting a project soon. |
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Labeeba Rahman Biology, Physiology/Neurobiology, and Public Health Research Topics
Labeeba is currently finishing up the training on membrane modeling and will be starting a project soon. |
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Anusha Sastry Public Health Research Topics
Anusha is currently finishing up the training on membrane modeling and will be starting a project soon. |
High School Students
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Aditri Maiti Centennial High School (Ellicot City, MD) (Class of 2026) Research Topics
Aditri is currently learning how to build cell membrane models. Future work will be on pre-cell modeling to represent early life development. |
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Adarsh Ramamurthy The Charter School of Wilmington (Delaware) (Class of 2025) Research Topics
Adarsh has been developing some pre-cell models to represent early life development. |