Biophysical Society Bulletin | May 2024

Biophysics Week

Bacterial Growth Networks: Hands-On Workshop The Bacterial Growth Network (BacGroNet) hands-on work shop was conducted on March 22 at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune. It was aimed at a diverse audience with registered participants including undergraduates from IISER Pune, PhD students, and profes sionals from Bioinformatics and Biological DataMining com panies. The proceedings were kicked off by a motivation to the theme: of bacteria, their use not just to study pathogen esis but also to examine fundamental molecular, genetic, and evolutionary aspects of biology. The research seminars were diverse with Sonika Bhatnagar from Netaji Subhas University of Technology, Victor Sourjik from Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, and Nitin Baliga from the Institute for Systems Biology speaking remotely. There were also intense hands-on sessions where individuals learned to understand and appreciate the power of scripting in Matlab to quantify bacterial cell dynamics. In summary, this workshop provided a primer to some approaches (computational and experi mental) to understanding of bacterial growth networks. The workshop was supported by a grant from the Department of Biotechnology of India.

"Super-resolution Fluorescence Imaging of Extracellular Environ ments." Attendees participated in speed-dating style network ing sessions, exploring research challenges and innovative inter disciplinary solutions. The event continued with a 3-Minute- Thesis–inspired flash talk session, featuring 12 presentations show casing diverse research areas from chemical engineering to neurosciences. Walter Boron ,

a Distinguished University Professor and Chair of Physi ology and Biophysics, provided closing remarks and distributed prizes and certificates to flash talk winners. Workshop in the MIDST of Mapping the Protein Landscape with Metadynamics When Canan Atilgan , BPS member since 2001, first got the Biophysics Week affiliate events invitation back in 2018, her group MIDST at Sabanci University, Türkiye decided to set in motion an idea they had been cooking for some time: a single-day event where a selected topic in computational bi ology would be conveyed to a group of 30 to 40 postgraduate students where the theory would be discussed in the morn ing and a hands-on session in the afternoon would cement the topic with real applications. The goal was to have each attendee leave the event with a solid idea of how they would apply the topic to their own research problems. Istanbul being a hub for computational biologists of all backgrounds, they have been focusing on a different topic in every one of these “Dialogues in the MIDST.” This year’s Dialogue was on explor ing protein landscapes with a focus on metadynamics. Not only did the 30+ attendees from all over Türkiye get a unique training opportunity, but they also enjoyed ample time for networking with their peers and shared research questions.

CWRU Biophysics Day 2024 In the dynamic field of biophysics, collaboration among experts from various fields is essential for solving complex biological problems. That was the focus of Case Western Reserve University’s (CWRU’s) inaugural Biophysics Day 2024, hosted by the CWRU Postdoc Association’s Profes sional Development Committee: to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and celebrate biophysics. The half-day event proved a great success, drawing more than 70 biophysics enthusiasts from diverse academic backgrounds, spanning undergraduates, graduates, postdocs, and faculty members across scientific disciplines. Keynote speaker Lydia Kisley , Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Chem istry, shared her groundbreaking biophysics research entitled

May 2024

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