AM Seminar: Multiscale Modeling of Cellular Membranes and Oncogenic Proteins

Presenter: Liam Stanton, Professor, San Jose State University

Description: In this talk, I will present a multiscale model for cellular membranes, which is trained on molecular dynamics simulations. The model is constructed within the formalism of dynamic density functional theory and can be extended to include features such as the presence of proteins and membrane deformations. This new framework has enabled simulations that can access length-scales on the order of microns and time-scales on the order of seconds, all while maintaining near fidelity to the underlying molecular interactions. Such scales are significant for accessing biological processes associated with signaling pathways within cells and experimentally relevant regimes. As applications, we consider the cellular interactions of two membrane proteins of biological interest: G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and RAS-RAF complexes, the latter being implicated in roughly 30% of human cancers.

Bio: Dr. Stanton received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University in 2009. He went on to do a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he later became a staff scientist at the Center for Applied Scientific Computing. In 2018, he joined the faculty at San Jose State University in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, where he is now an associate professor and a recent recipient of the Dean’s Scholar Award in Research Excellence. Dr. Stanton’s current research interests are in the multiscale modeling of non-equilibrium, many-body systems. In particular, he focuses on areas such as fusion energy, biophysical systems and statistical mechanics.

Hosted by: Applied Mathematics