News and blog-style posts

UMB Ramp Lunch & Learn

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I volunteered at the UMB RAMP program’s May Lunch & Learn activity, where a UMB researcher meets with a small group of high school students to discuss their researhc, career development and trajectory, and then give a demonstration with a hands-on activity. The students played a short game of Monte Carlo pi estimation in person, then we wrote some python code to do the same thing. While not directly related to molecular simulation, it relates a few key ideas, like how seemingly “random” events can converge on a stable value, or how useful computers can be to iterate over a simple, repeatable arithmetic task. Read more

Best of Biophysical Journal 2023!

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My paper on hydrophobic dewetting, published with Jianhan and Zhiguang, was selected as one of twenty articles in the Best of Biophysical Journal 2023! This is a big honor, and feels immensely gratifying! This was essentially my first attempt to guide the direction of a research project more directly, although Jianhan of course provided many mission-critical suggestions and corrections at every phase of the project. The honor came as a surprise since none of us knew about the honor until seeing the issue in print after the BPS Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. Check it out! Read more

PhD Dissertation Defense

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I gave my final PhD dissertation defense on Monday, June 5th 2023. This was a very special day, and week, to reflect on the work I’ve done and the progress I’ve made as a scientist, and to share that progress with my family, friends, and the academic community here in Amherst. It’s been a wonderful and challenging expeirence. Read more

Postdoc at UMB

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I have accepted a position at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, in Alex MacKerell’s lab in the School of Pharmacy. In addition, I have been awarded funding through the Cancer Biology T-32 training grant. I will utilize simulation techniques devleoped by Alex’s group to identify drug-like small molecules for targeting ion channels (BK in particular) in cancer cells.

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1st class done!

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My first class, a first-year seminar called “Order and Chaos, Reconciling atomic randomness and the human world” was a big success. Some of the final projects students designed, carried out and presented:

• Gas permeation through a eggshell-like membrane (pictured below)
• Irreversibility of an explosion simulation
• Thermal equilibration and planet formation
• Equilibration of plucked strings

ResearchFest Presentation

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For my recent presentation at the UMass Chemistry ResearchFest, I was awarded the second-place award, a great honor and a generous monetary prize. I was among 4 student speakers selected for the highly-competitive presentations each year. One senior student per lab can be nominated. I was following in the tradition of the great Xiaorong Liu, who spoke at my first ResearchFest in 2018. Read more

Eureka! girls science camp

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CNS Teaching Fellowship

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The UMass College of Natural Sciences offers a First-year seminar to CNS-declared majors under the broad umbrella “Think like a Scientist”. Graduate students interested in a teaching career are encouraged to apply. Each FYS is unqiue to the person teaching it, which gave me the opportunity to build a (mini) cirriculum and practice some skills I learned abstractly by taking CIRTL online training courses. Read more

Introduction to Evidence-based Teaching

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This online course (through the edX platform and CIRTL) introduced me to the kinds of challenges facing an ‘expert’ in a field who is trying to reach a collection of students with various skills, previous knowledge, and emotions. In fact, the growth-mindset and iterative, active learning priciples I hope to implement are the same I need to use to learn how to teach.

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The Inclusive STEM Teaching Project Course

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This online course (through the edX platform) used embodied case study videos and self-reflection prompts to train grad students, postdocs and current faculty to approach education through personal and inclusive strategies backed by the latest educational reserach.

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Erik and Zoes wedding

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Erik and Zoe got married in Eagle, ID. We met a the College of Idaho in Caldwell, ID.
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Awarded CBI Fellowship

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The Chemistry Biology Interface (CBI) is a competitive NIH-funded fellowship designed “to train students with diverse scientific backgrounds for productive research at the interface between chemistry and biology” at UMass.”

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Website built

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My labmate Xiping Gong and I learned that one can host a free website at username.github.io using a special repo with that name. He then found the awesome template academicpages.github.io, which I immediately forked and started using. Since then, many Chen lab members have followed suit: Read more