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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:
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
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
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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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 Zoe got married in Eagle, ID. We met a the College of Idaho in Caldwell, ID.
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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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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
I’m learning to play!
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I listen to some podcasts and YouTube channels Read more
I (used to) run a lot
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I really enjoy swimming!
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This website, eriknordquist.com, is my website. Read more
I am Zoe, artistic creator of the digital avatars of this site! Read more
Using Newton’s laws to simulate molecular motion, like these wiggling waters:
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Molecular chaperones like DnaK help fold misfolded proteins,
but how do they distinguish well-folded, misfolded, and disordered regions?
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Why do some protein ion channels like the BK channel, which are quite large ~1.2 nm diameter, have vapor rather than physical barriers?
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Hydrophobic dewetting forms a vapor barrier and closes BK Channel; what role do specific mutations play in (de-)stabilizing this delicate liquid-vapor interplay?
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Given abundant mutational data, I’m leveraging molecular and statistical modeling to predict gating voltage of the BK channel.
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I gave a lecture on molecular mechanics in Jianhan’s graduate-level statistical mechanics course. Read more
I have taken several courses associated with CIRTL on the online learning platform edX, including:
Read moreEffective scientific storytelling is similar to telling a fairy-tale.
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The goal of the FYS is to welcome first-year CNS students and prepare them for college and for a major in the sciences.
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