Aleksei Aksimentiev joined the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois in 2001 as a postdoctoral research associate. He became a faculty member in the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois in 2005.
Research
Aksimentiev studies the organization of DNA in cells to establish cancer’s molecular origins and drug resistance. His work connects atomic-scale structures of DNA and nucleosomes and their modification to drug resistance by characterizing the microscopic processes leading to genome changes. He uses all-atom and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to describe the mechanics of DNA, DNA binding to histone proteins in a nucleosome, and the self-association of distance DNA fragments mediated by physical forces. View his research group’s website for more information.
Education
- Ph.D., Chemistry, Institute of Physical Chemistry Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, 1999
- Postdoctoral Training, Mitsui Chemicals, Tokyo, Japan, 1999-2001
Campus Affiliations
- Professor, Physics
- Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- Affiliate, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
- Professor, Bioengineering
- Professor, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
Select Honors and Recognitions
- IBM Faculty Fellow Award, 2008
- Beckman Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies, 2009-2010
- NSF CAREER Award, 2010
- Blue Waters Professorship, 2014
- Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, 2015