Quantitative Bioscience at the University of Tennessee

Cellular Biophysics

The interdisciplinary physics frontier of cellular biophysics focuses on physical principles underlying cell function. Biophysicists develop mathematical and computational models to describe cellular functions and perform experiments to physically perturb cells and measure their mechanical responses. Studies have focused on observing complex structures inside cells, detecting cellular activities, and extending methods developed to study purified biological molecules to microscope-based cellular measurements. Combining novel experimental tools with mathematical models grounded in the physical sciences has enabled significant recent breakthroughs in the field.

Researcher		Department	Research Interests
	Steve Abel Email	Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	Computational cell biology and immunology, theory and simulation of soft biological materials, membrane and polymer biophysics, systems biology
	Vasilios Alexiades Email	Mathematics	Math biology (chemotaxis, action potentials, phototransduction), phase change processes (laser ablation, solidification), CFD, parallel computing
	Hong Guo Email	Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology	Computational molecular and structural biology
	Maxim Lavrentovich Email	Physics and Astronomy	Theoretical biophysics, soft condensed matter physics
	Jaan Mannik Email	Physics and Astronomy	Cellular biophysics, self-organizing processes in bacterial cell
	Rachel Patton McCord Email	Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology	3D genome structure and the biophysics of cell migration
	Andreas Nebenführ Email	Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology	Cell biology of organelle movement in Arabidopsis
	Jeremy Smith Email	Governor's Chair for Molecular Biophysics; Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology	Computational molecular biophysics, supercomputing, neutrons, drug design. Director, Center for Molecular Biophysics, ORNL
	Steven Wise Email	Mathematics	Mathematical biology, computational materials science, computational and applied math

NIMBioS
1122 Volunteer Blvd., Suite 106
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-3410
PH: (865) 974-9334
FAX: (865) 974-9461
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From 2008 until early 2021, NIMBioS was supported by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.