Erik Nordquist

Erik Nordquist

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Alex MacKerell Group University of Maryland, Baltimore

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.

I’m happy to be in the closing chapter of my time at Amherst, but it will be a big transition to the city of Baltimore and bittersweet to leave my home for the last 5 years. I’m excited to learn many new things in my next destination from Alex and the rest of his lab! Plus, I’ll be within an hour of D.C. and many national monuments and historic Civil War battlefields.

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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

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
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