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Thirumalai Group
University of Maryland
Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology, Building 085
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301.405.4803
Fax: 301.314.9404

Any complaints or random comments are encouraged to be addressed here. Helpful suggestions are to be directed here.

The old webpage can still be found here

left to right: Mike, Riina, Hong-Suk, Lance, Sam, Spring, Jie, Dave, Toan, Caricia, Zhenxing, Natasha, David, Reddy, and Jong (circa. 2010)

back row, left to right: Ed, Dave, Riina, Greg, Reddy, Lance, Hong-Suk, and Jong-Chin
front row, left to right: Sam, Vaithee, Jie, Zhenxing, David, and Toan
(circa. 2008)

back row, left to right: Sarvin, Greg, Margaret, Dave, George, and Ruxandra
front row, left to right: Vaithee, Changbong, Ed, and Valeri
(circa. 2005)
GROUP NEWS...
   
2012
Zhechun Zhang (Lance) has been awarded the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from University of Maryland.

2012
Sam Cho was interviewed on Fox TV news [link] about his research with Shi Biyun and Dave regarding the folding of human telomerase RNA pseudoknot, as well as GPU-optimized MD simulations.

2012
Shi Biyun and Sam Cho's study on RNA folding induced by ion and temperature published in JACS Vol. 133, p20634 (2011) [link] has been highlighted in JACS Spotlights vol 134, p.745 (2012) [link]

2011
Michael Hinczewski is awarded an NIH F32 postdoctoral fellowship.

2011
Review by Dave, Reddy and Straub titled "Role of water in protein aggregation and amyloid polymorphism" to be published in Accounts of Chemical Research [link] is highlighted by the Faculty of 1000 Biology as a must-read paper [link]

2011
Dr. Jie Chen has received the inaugural University of Maryland Distinguished Dissertation Prize in the disciplinary area of Biological and Life Sciences. Her dissertation “Link Between Dynamics and Function in Single and Multi-subunit Enzymes” was nominated by the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences.

2010
Reddy and Dave's paper published in PNAS titled "Dry amyloid fibril assembly in a yeast prion peptide is mediated by long-lived structures containing water wires" [link] is highlighted in Chemical & Engineering News. [link]

2010
Harmen Bussemaker (Columbia University) won the Guggenheim Fellowship and was also awarded the Columbia Faculty award

2010
Zhenxing Liu accepts an academic position in Beijing Normal University starting January 2011

2010
Toan received Postdoc Travel Award for the ASCB 50th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia Dec 2010

2010
Dave was awarded Distinguished University Professor

2010
Jie Chen and Dave's paper published in PNAS, "Promoter melting triggered by bacterial RNA polymerase occurs in three steps" was featured on the cover, and appeared as a research highlight in EurekAlert! [link]
2010
Dave discusses in the interview on a leading Australian radio station [link] the development of a self-replicating "synethetic bacterial cell" by J. Craig Venter's team [press release].
2010
Jie Chen accepts a postdoctoral position in the group of Barry Honig (Columbia Univ.).
2010
A paper by Riina Tehver and Dave Thirumalai in the journal Structure titled, "Rigor to Post-Rigor Transition in Myosin V: Link between the Dynamics and the Supporting Architecture" [link] is featured in a special "Preview" written by Ron Elber (UT Austin) [link].
2010
Sam Cho accepts a tenure track faculty position in the Departments of Physics and Computer Science at Wake Forest University.
2010
Riina Tehver accepts a tenure track faculty position in the Department of Physics at Denison University.
Alumni News
Wenjun Zheng (University at Buffalo, SUNY) garners an NSF CAREER Award.
2009
A paper by Changbong Hyeon and Dave Thirumalai (in collaboration with Alex D. Mackerell, Jr.) in J. Amer. Chem. Soc. titled,"Urea Destabilizes RNA by Forming Stacking Interactions and Multiple Hydrogen Bonds with Nucleic Acid Bases" [link] is highlighted in Chemical & Engineering News [link].
2009
Dave is elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry
2009
Dave given Senior Humbolt Research award.

Alumni News
Ruxandra Dima and George Stan (University of Cincinnati) garner NSF CAREER Awards.
Alumni News
Harmen Bussemaker (Columbia University) has been awarded tenure.

2008
A paper by David Pincus, Changbong Hyeon, and Dave Thirumalai in J. Amer. Chem. Soc. titled, "Effects of Trimethylamine N-Oxide (TMAO) and Crowding Agents on the Stability of RNA Hairpins" [link] , is one of only 23 papers in 2008 to be featured in JACS Select [link].

2008
Dave's paper in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. titled, "Urea denaturation by stronger dispersion interactions with proteins than water implies a 2-stage unfolding", was featured on the cover [link], and it received a special commentary written by Peter Rossky (UT, Austin) [link].

2008
Ed O'Brien receives an award from the Gordon Conference for his poster, "Osmolyte and denaturant effects on proteins are accurately predicted with the Molecular Transfer Model".

2008
Greg Morrison accepts a postdoctoral position in the group of L. Mahadevan (Harvard Univ.)

2008
Ed O'Brien is awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship

2008
Riina Tehver receives an award from the Gordon Conference for her poster, "Kinetic model for GroEL-mediated protein folding".

2007
Ed O'Brien accepts a postdoctoral postition in the group of Chris Dobson (University of Cambridge, UK)

2007
Sam Cho is awarded an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship

2007
Riina Tehver is awarded an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship