Andreas Mershin | |
---|---|
Alma mater | Imperial College Texas A&M University |
Known for | Biophysics of the cytoskeleton, [1] Biological photovoltaics [2] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biophysicist |
Institutions | MIT |
Doctoral advisor | Dimitri V. Nanopoulos |
Andreas Mershin is a physicist at the Center for Bits and Atoms in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He received his MSci in physics from Imperial College London (1997) and his PhD in physics from Texas A&M University (2003), under Dimitri V. Nanopoulos, where he studied the theoretical and experimental biophysics of the cytoskeleton. He performed molecular dynamic simulations on tubulin. Under an NSF grant he conducted cross-disciplinary research that experimented with surface plasmon resonance, dielectric spectroscopy and molecular neurobiology. Mershin tested the hypothesis that the neuronal microtubular cytoskeleton is involved in memory encoding, storage, and retrieval in Drosophila.
Mershin researches bio- and nano- materials at the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, where he develops bioelectronic photovoltaic and machine olfaction applications using membrane proteins integrated onto semiconductors. Mershin has patented in the field of bioenergy harvesters, [3] he is also a co-founder of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' international annual "Molecular Frontiers Inquiry Prize" [4] for the best scientific question posed by children. [5]
Nanotechnology, often shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scales for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabrication of macroscale products, also now referred to as molecular nanotechnology. A more generalized description of nanotechnology was subsequently established by the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which defined nanotechnology as the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). This definition reflects the fact that quantum mechanical effects are important at this quantum-realm scale, and so the definition shifted from a particular technological goal to a research category inclusive of all types of research and technologies that deal with the special properties of matter which occur below the given size threshold. It is therefore common to see the plural form "nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to the broad range of research and applications whose common trait is size.
Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. Biophysical research shares significant overlap with biochemistry, molecular biology, physical chemistry, physiology, nanotechnology, bioengineering, computational biology, biomechanics, developmental biology and systems biology.
Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamic "evolution" of the system. In the most common version, the trajectories of atoms and molecules are determined by numerically solving Newton's equations of motion for a system of interacting particles, where forces between the particles and their potential energies are often calculated using interatomic potentials or molecular mechanical force fields. The method is applied mostly in chemical physics, materials science, and biophysics.
Rainer "Rai" Weiss is an American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He is a professor of physics emeritus at MIT and an adjunct professor at LSU. He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. He was Chair of the COBE Science Working Group.
Deborah Shiu-lan Jin was an American physicist and fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Professor Adjunct, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado; and a fellow of the JILA, a NIST joint laboratory with the University of Colorado.
Wolfgang Ketterle is a German physicist and professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research has focused on experiments that trap and cool atoms to temperatures close to absolute zero, and he led one of the first groups to realize Bose–Einstein condensation in these systems in 1995. For this achievement, as well as early fundamental studies of condensates, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, together with Eric Allin Cornell and Carl Wieman.
Anton Zeilinger is an Austrian quantum physicist and Nobel laureate in physics of 2022. Zeilinger is professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna and senior scientist at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Most of his research concerns the fundamental aspects and applications of quantum entanglement.
Rahul Sarpeshkar is the Thomas E. Kurtz Professor and a professor of engineering, professor of physics, professor of microbiology & immunology, and professor of molecular and systems biology at Dartmouth. Sarpeshkar, whose interdisciplinary work is in bioengineering, electrical engineering, quantum physics, and biophysics, is the inaugural chair of the William H. Neukom cluster of computational science, which focuses on analog, quantum, and biological computation. The clusters, designed by faculty from across the institution to address major global challenges, are part of President Philip Hanlon's vision for strengthening academic excellence at Dartmouth. Prior to Dartmouth, Sarpeshkar was a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and led the Analog Circuits and Biological Systems Group. He is now also a visiting scientist at MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics.
The nanoscopic scale usually refers to structures with a length scale applicable to nanotechnology, usually cited as 1–100 nanometers (nm). A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The nanoscopic scale is a lower bound to the mesoscopic scale for most solids.
Harden M. McConnell was an American physical chemist. His many awards included the National Medal of Science and the Wolf Prize, and he was elected to the National Academy of Science."
Quantum biology is the study of applications of quantum mechanics and theoretical chemistry to aspects of biology that cannot be accurately described by the classical laws of physics. An understanding of fundamental quantum interactions is important because they determine the properties of the next level of organization in biological systems.
Christopher Roy Monroe is an American physicist and engineer in the areas of atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum information science, especially quantum computing. He directs one of the leading research and development efforts in ion trap quantum computing. Monroe is the Gilhuly Family Presidential Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Duke University and is College Park Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland and Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute and Joint Center for Quantum Computer Science. He is also co-founder and chief scientist at IonQ, Inc.
Franz Josef Gießibl is a German physicist and university professor at the University of Regensburg.
Gerhard Rempe is a German physicist, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Munich. He has performed pioneering experiments in atomic and molecular physics, quantum optics and quantum information processing.
Alan T. Charlie Johnson is an American physicist, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, and the director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Jun Ye is a Chinese-American physicist at JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the University of Colorado Boulder, working primarily in the field of atomic, molecular and optical physics.
Viswanathan Sasisekharan is an Indian biophysicist known for his work on the structure and conformation of biopolymers. He introduced the use of torsion angles to describe polypeptide and protein conformation, a central principle of the plot. Additionally, he proposed alternative models of DNA structure that provided insights beyond the standard double helix model. For his contributions to the biological sciences, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of India’s highest science awards, in 1978.
Andreas J. Heinrich is a physicist working with scanning tunneling microscopy, quantum technology, nanoscience, spin excitation spectroscopy, and precise atom manipulation. He worked for IBM Research in Almaden for 18 years, during which time he developed nanosecond scanning tunneling microscopy which provided an improvement in time resolution of 100,000 times, and combined x-ray absorption spectroscopy with spin excitation spectroscopy. In 2015 his team combined STM with electron spin resonance, which enables single-atom measurements on spins with nano-electronvolt precision REF1, REF2. In 2022 his team demonstrated the extension of ESR-STM to individual molecules REF3. Heinrich was also principal investigator of the stop-motion animated short film A Boy and His Atom filmed by moving thousands of individual atoms. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of the Heinrich Rohrer Medal of the Japan Society of Vacuum and Surface Science.
Monika Schleier-Smith is an American experimental physicist studying many-body quantum physics by precisely assembling systems of ultracold atoms. These atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO) engineered systems have applications in quantum sensing, coherent control, and quantum computing. Schleier-Smith is an Associate Professor of Physics at Stanford University, a Sloan Research Fellow, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient. Schleier-Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Hertz Foundation.
Andrea Morello is the Scientia Professor of quantum engineering in the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at the University of New South Wales, and a Program Manager at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T). Morello is the head of the Fundamental Quantum Technologies Laboratory at UNSW.