Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Bucharest 2026

Biophysics of Membrane Reactions in Brian

Speaker Abstracts

10:40 – 11:00

Coffee Break & Posters

Session XI

Reactions in Cells and in vivo Chair: Vlad Cojocaru, University of Babes Bolyai Cluj Napoca, Romania

11:00 – 11:25

Joachim Heberle, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Infrared Nanoscopy for Subcellular Chemical Imaging

11:25 – 11:50

Masha Niv, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Hidden Pockets and Intracellular Ions: Lessons from Bitter Taste GPCRs Herbert Nar, Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany Structure, Function and Drug Interactions of Orphan GPCRs Cosmin Trif, Romanian Academy of Sciences, Romania * Something Sweet: A Tale of a Novel Modulator for Free Fatty Acid Receptor (FFAR1/GPR40) Advanced Computational Approaches to Study Membrane Reactions Chair: Andrei Petrescu, Romanian Academy of Sciences, Romania Hossein Batebi, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Allosteric Communication and Kinetic Regulation in Membrane Proteins Florence Tama, Nagoya University, Japan Seeing Function in Motion: Computational Methods for Protein Dynamics Maria Kurnikova, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Molecular Modeling of the Structure and Function of the Glutamate Receptors Laurentiu Spiridon, Romanian Academy of Sciences, Romania * ROBOSAMPLE: Accelerating Protein Conformational Landscape Exploration via Robot Mechanics Simulations Lunch and Group Photo

11:50 – 12:15

12:15 – 12:30

13:00 – 14:00

Session XII

14:00 – 14:25

14:25 – 14:50

14:50 – 15:15

15:15 – 15:30

15:30 – 16:00

Coffee Break & Posters

Session XIII

Perspectives in Membrane Receptor Dynamics Chair: Gabriela Popescu, University of Buffalo, USA

16:00 – 16:25

Jana Shen, University of Maryland, USA Membrane Crossing of Opioids Revealed by Continuous Constant PH Molecular Dynamics Simulations and Cell Experiments Gebhard Schertler, Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland From Structural Studies of GPCRs to Engineering OptoGPCRs as Scientific Tools and for Optogenetic Applications

16:25 – 16:50

16:50 – 17:05

Closing Remarks and Biophysical Journal Poster Awards

17:05 – 18:15

Dinner Buffet and Networking

*Contributed talks selected from among submitted abstracts

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