Team
402 Benkovic Building
Penn State University
University Park, PA 16802
Contact: epo2@psu.edu
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Edward P. O’Brien
Professor of Chemistry and Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
Research Focus: Physical bioinformatics and computational biophysics, specializing in co-translational protein folding, translation elongation kinetics, and protein misfolding mechanisms. His lab develops computational methods to understand how proteins achieve their functional conformations during synthesis and how this process relates to disease.
He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at the University of Maryland in 2008 with Prof. Dave Thirumalai and joined Penn State University in 2014.
Yang Jiang
Assistant Research Professor
Research Focus: Computational biophysics and structural bioinformatics, with an emphasis on protein misfolding mechanisms studied through molecular simulations, mass spectrometry, and cryo-EM data.
He earned his Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry/Biophysics in 2018, joined the O’Brien Lab as a postdoctoral researcher, and was promoted to Assistant Research Professor in 2021.
407 Benkovic Building
Penn State University
University Park, PA 16802
Contact: qzv5006@psu.edu
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Quyen V. Vu
Postdoctoral Scholar
Research Focus: Computational biophysics and molecular dynamics simulations of protein folding and misfolding mechanisms.
He obtained his Ph.D. in Physics (Computational Biophysics) at the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences in 2023 and joined the O’Brien lab since 2024.
Maria F. Anglero
Master Student
Research Focus: Investigating protein entanglement mechanisms and their association with human diseases through computational analysis of the human proteome.
Tram Ha
Graduate Student
Research Focus:
Alumni
Contact: yur97@psu.edu
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Yiyun Rao
Former Position: Graduate Student
Contact: ims86@psu.edu
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Ian Sitarik
Former Position: Graduate Student
Current Position: Staff Scientist at NCEMS
Research Focus: Non-native entanglement and protein structure, function and misfolding
Sarah Leininger
Former Position: Graduate Student
Research Focus: Mechanochemistry in translation and ribosome elongation kinetics
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Nabeel Ahmed
Former Position: Graduate Student
Current Position: Senior Scientist at Moderna
Research Focus: Ribosome profiling analysis and translation elongation kinetics
Contact: dan182@psu.edu
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Daniel Nissley
Former Position: Graduate Student
Current Position: Chief Scientific Officer at NCEMS
Research Focus: Co-translational protein folding and translation kinetics