December 5, 2024
Congratulations to Shrishti for passing her ORP exam and officially became a PhD candidate! The lab got together and had a modest celebration. We are all very happy for Shrishti and look forward to many more exciting accomplishments in the next few years!

November 28, 2024
The lab and friends celebrated Thanksgiving together at Jianhan's house. We were all thankful for the wondeful opportunity and previlege of enjoying science, life and friendship togehter during this past year! As a group tradition, we made dumplings together. Jian also shared his wonderful new skill of making delicious cakes!

October 31, 2024
We had a modest farewll lunch with our beloved Zhiguang. He will join the Mass General Hospital as a Rearch Fellow. Zhiguang has been the backbone of the lab since 2014, a true leader and role model. He has helped us in so many ways, keeping our computers running, teaching us how to run various types of simulations, and making major discoveries in every project that he has been involved with. He has also being doing all these while going through some extraordinary challenges in life. The lab will never be the same without Zhiguang. We all wish him and his family the absolute best in Boston!

September 6, 2024
We are pleased to welcome Devanshee Sanghvi to our lab! Devanshee is a (graduating) junior BMB and Chemistry double major, who originally came from Pune, India. Devanshee will be learning molecular modeling and simulation, likely in parallel to her experimental work in Tom Maresca’s lab.

August 27, 2024
Congratulations to Jian, Kairong, David, Shrishti and Harsha for highly successful presentations at the annual Chemistry ResearchFest event. They were able to showcase several exciting projects from our lab. A very special recognition goes to Jian for being selected to give a coveted talk and winning the prestigious Dr. Paul Hatheway Terry Endowment Award (thre years in a row for the Chen lab)! What a beautiful day!

June 3, 2024
We officially welcome Harsha Chilukuri S to the lab as a PhD student in Chemical Engineering! Harsha came from Bengaluru, India. He received his BE in Chemical Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University and MS from UMass Amherst, studying the interaction of small molecules with membranes. In our lab, Harsha will be studying membrane ion channels, biomolecular condensates and others. We look forward to exploring some exciting science (and engineering) together in the next few years!

May 28, 2024
We are thrilled to received an UMass Interdisciplinary Research Grant to support a new collaborative project on antibiotic forcasting using biophysics and machine learning, with Anna Green from CICS and Lulu Kang from Math & Stat.

May 18, 2024
Yumeng came back for the Graudate School Commencement! It was the first of the lab and Jianhan finally was able to have his first hooding experience! The group enjoyed a day hiking to a couple of group favorite waterfalls in Green Mountains and enjoyed a picnic together. We (re)discovered that the railway through the famous Hoosac Tunnel is a live one ...

April 26, 2024
Congratulations to Aron for winning the Uche Anyanwu Memorial Award for Outstanding Research at the 20th Annual Undergraduate Poster Session at UMass Department of Chemistry! Aron presented some of his exciting findings about how drug molecules modulate the structure and dynamics of TRPC5 channels.

April 13, 2024
We hosted the Molecualr Biophysics in the Northeast on UMass Amhest campus this Saturday. This is an exciting one-day meeting that brings together experimental and computational molecular biophysicists in the norteatern region and emphasizes the involvement of student and postdoctoral trainees. This year's meeting had over 170 researchers in attendence from ~20 universities and institutions and showcased 80 poster presentations in addition to 14 talks from PIs and trainees. We look foward to future MBN meetings!

April 8-25, 2024
Congatulations to Shrishti, Kairong and David for passing their prospectus (Shrishti) and ORP (Kairong and David) exams! One small step forward a time and in the right direction!

Feb 26, 2024
Warmest congratulations to Xiaorong Liu, our first PhD from UMass, who has accepted the offer to become an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at the University of New Mexico! We are all very proud of Xiaorong and wish her the best in the exciting new chapter of her career!

Feb 15, 2024
Warmest congratulations to Erik and Zhiguang for their paper on "Inner pore hydration free energy controls the activation of the big potassium channel and its mutants" being selected as one for the Best of 2023 published in Biophysical Journal!

Feb 9-14, 2024
Jian, Kairong, Shrishti and Jianhan attended the annual Biophysical Society meeting in the beautiful Philadelphia. We celebrated the Lunar Chinese New Year in the best chinese restaurant of the town, presented some of our exciting results, and enjoyed the beautiful city. We also reconnected with the Chen lab alumni Erik and Mahdieh, as well as our collaborators from WUSTL, Buffalo, ISU, KSU, USC, Copenhagen, Van Andel and others. It was an exciting and memorable meeting!

Jan 15 and Feb 2, 2024
The lab celebrated Yumeng's memorable four years in the lab together at Jianhan's house. Yumeng has demonstrated how much one could accomplish with extreme dedication to research excellence and tenacity in front of extraordinary challenges. We are all so proud of her and wish her the best in her next chapter of life and scientific careeer!

We missed Yumeng so much that she had to come back to the lab for two more weeks before eventually saying goodbye one last time after the Feburary lab research update.