Dennis Della Corte
Assistant Professor
Physics and Astronomy
Our goal is to improve life through better medicine, cleaner energy, and better technology. To achieve this, we study and use the basic principles that govern assembly and function of molecular machines. We use state of the art computational methods to elucidate experimental findings, engineer new proteins and extract knowledge from databases.
Google Scholar: //scholar.google.com/citations?user=63v9g2YAAAAJ&hl=en
Research website : //physics.byu.edu/research/dellacortelab/about
Dan Ess
Professor
Chemistry
My group uses and develops computational chemistry tools to discover reaction mechanisms, reactivity principles, and design catalysts that are experimentally realized.
Google Scholar: //scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=50-tT2MAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
Research website: //esslab.byu.edu/
Douglas R. Tree
Assistant Professor
Chemical Engineering
Our research is focused on theory and simulation of soft material systems including polymers and colloidal materials. We are currently very interested in self-assembly and phase transitions in out-of-equilibrium systems, and we have active projects related to polymer crystallization, colloidal self-assembly at interfaces, synthetic morphogenesis of polymer vesicles, active materials, and molecular-scale origami.
Google Scholar: //scholar.google.com/citations?user=ByuBvdUAAAAJ&hl=en
Research website : //www.et.byu.edu/~treedoug/
Podcast (with DJ Seo in ChemE and Wally Paxton in Chemistry): //anchor.fm/howscience
Jonathan Hill
Assistant Professor
Cell Biology and Physiology
Dr. Hill is working on regulating protein dimerization rates by regulating conformational changes in synthetic binding domains. Protein folding and binding rate modeling are being combined with in vitro experiments to create a predictive model for these interactions and how individual amino acid changes affect these rates. If successful, these studies will expand our ability to create finely tuned biosensors for a wide range of analytes.
Dixon Woodbury
Professor
Cell Biology and Physiology
Dr. Woodbury's research is in cellular and molecular physiology and focuses on membrane biophysics, particularly vesicle/membrane fusion and its regulation by SNARE proteins and alcohols. Current work focuses on changes in membrane structure and SNARE proteins due to environmental changes as measured by CD (circular dichroism), fluorescence, mass spectrometry, and molecular dynamics.
Research Website: //cell.byu.edu/woodbury-lab
James Moody
Assistant Professor
Chemistry
Radical S-adenosylmethionine (RS) enzymes are ubiquitous in nature and essential across all domains of life, catalyzing high-energy chemical transformations. Although computational and experimental enzyme engineering is becoming a mainstay in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, RS enzymes have yet to be employed in this arena. We employ the protein design tools within the Rosetta Macromolecular Modeling Suite to re-engineer RS enzymes to catalyze user-defined radical-mediated reactions on novel substrates.
Morris Argyle
Associate Professor
Chemical Engineering
Morris Argyle's research interests lie in determining the structure/function relationships of heterogeneous catalysts using spectroscopic techniques. He is also active in the broader area of energy engineering, including carbon capture and increasing energy efficiency.