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 protein folding mechanisms, with emphasis on understanding molecular origins of protein misfolding and developing computational methods to predict and prevent misfolding-related diseases.

He obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry/Biophysics and joined the O’Brien lab as Assistant Research Professor.

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

Dr. Yiyun Rao

Former Position: Graduate Student
Current Position:
Research Focus:

Dr. Ian Sitarik

Former Position: Graduate Student
Current Position: Staff Scientist at NCEMS
Research Focus: Non-native entanglement and protein structure, function and misfolding

Dr. Sarah Leininger

Former Position: Graduate Student
Research Focus: Mechanochemistry in translation and ribosome elongation kinetics

Dr. Nabeel Ahmed

Former Position: Graduate Student
Current Position: Senior Scientist at Moderna
Research Focus: Ribosome profiling analysis and translation elongation kinetics

Dr. Daniel Nissley

Former Position: Graduate Student
Current Position: Chief Scientific Officer at NCEMS
Research Focus: Co-translational protein folding and translation kinetics