Faculty Profiles

« Return to Faculty List

Aleksei Aksimentiev Assistant Professor of Physics and Biophysics Ph.D. 1999, Institute of Physical Chemistry,Warsaw Poland modeling synthetic nanobiodevices; microscopic mechanics of celluar machinery Aleksei Aksimentiev 263 Loomis, MC-704 1110 W Green Street Urbana, IL 61801 217-333-6495 aksiment@illinois.edu

The research focus of my group is on understanding molecular mechanics of biological molecular motors such as pumps, transporters and DNA replication enzymes and on designing synthetic systems that have similar functionality. A typical goal of a research project is to elucidate or design a chain of molecular events that providess a biological or synthetic nanomachine desired functionality. For this purpose we deploy a variety of computational methods and tools, including but not limited to all-atom and coarse-grained molecular dynamics, Brownian dynamics, stochastic and continuum modeling. The following are three typical projects being actively pursued in my group:

- Molecular mechanisms of DNA replication.
- Sequencing DNA using synthetic and biological nanopores.
- Design and assembly of synthetic membrane channels.