Welcome!
We are a young new biophysics and soft matter group in the Department of Applied Maths in the University of Western Ontario in London (ON). Our research is geared towards the interface between condensed matter physics, biology and biomedical sciences. Typically, we employ large scale computer simulations combined with analytical studies. Most of our projects are done in collaboration with experimental groups.
Currently we concentrate on problems related to multiscale modeling of biological systems, lipid membranes, pattern formation in reaction-diffusion systems, and computational methods.
From these pages you'll find more about our research, downloadable software, events, computational facilities and jobs/studentships. If you would like to know more, get re/preprints, suggest a collaboration, etc., please don't hesitate to contact us.
Research highlights (reload the page to see a different one)
Good cholesterol or
high density lipoproteins (HDL) are protective against
the risk of cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis.
When HDL does its job, it undergoes a
transformation from discoidal into spheroidal shape.
Interestingly, the detailed structure of HDL remains
largerly unknown. We have used computer simulations
to study HDL. Our results explain how some of those
important morphological changes occur.
- Structure of spheroidal HDL particles revealed by combined atomistic and coarse grained simulations. Catte et al., Biophys. J. (2007)
Support
I am pleased to acknowledge funding and support by- the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- NSERC Discovery Accelerator Program
- Ontario Early Researcher Award Program
- Centre for Chemical Physics.
- DEISA (Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications) Extreme Computing Initiative (DECI)