News

2009

• November 2009 - Dr. Dongping Zhong is named a fellow of the American Physical Society, "For his outstanding contributions to biophysics, by brilliantly integrating techniques of molecular biology and state-of-the-art laser physics to elucidate the mechanism of macromolecular hydration and the impact of protein structure on dynamics."
   
• August 2009 - Luyuan Zhang wins the Research Excellence Award in Femtochemistry IX, the most prestigious femtosecond conference which finished recently in Beijing, China.
   
• August 2009 - Dr. Dongping Zhong wins the 2009 Overseas Chinese Physics Association (OCPA) Outstanding Young Researcher Award (OYRA). 
   
• May 2009 - Ali Hassanali won a first prize for his talk "Molecular mechanisms in the repair of the cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer" at the Ohio State University Molecular Life Sciences Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs Symposium.
   
• May 2009 - Ali Hassanali receives the Presidential Fellowship from the Ohio State Graduate School.
   
• April 2009 - Ali Hassanali receives the Outstanding Student Research Achievement Award from the biophysics program.

2008

• November 2008 - Luyuan Zhang received a travel award from the American Physical society to present her research on protein surface hydration which will be held on March 16-20, 2009, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
   
• November 2008 - Tanping Li received a travel award from the Biophysics society to present her research on molecular dynamics simulations of protein hydration which will be held on February 28-March 4, 2009, in Boston, Massachusetts.
   
• May 2008 - Luyuan Zhang received the American Heart Association (AHA) Fellowship for the 2008-2010 academic years.
   
• May 2008 - Ya-Ting Kao receives the Presidential Fellowship from the Ohio State Graduate School.
   
• April 2008 - Weihong Qiu receives the Outstanding Student Research Achievement Award from the biophysics program.
   
• April 2008 - Dr. Dongping Zhong receives a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award from The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.
   
• April 2008 - Dr. Dongping Zhong receives the Dr. Elizabeth L. Gross Award for faculty excellence from the Ohio State Biophysics Program.
   
• March 2008 - Dr. Dongping Zhong receives a CAREER award from The National Science Foundation.
   
• February 2008 - Dr. Dongping Zhong receives a Sloan Research Fellowship from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
   
• January 2008 - Dr. Dongping Zhong appointed as the first holder of the Robert Smith Endowed Professorship in Physics.

2007

• November 2007 - Our recent research on the global mapping of hydration dynamics and water-protein interactions was featured in Research News, PNAS cover (titles) and Editors' choice in Science.
   
• May 2007 - Weihong Qiu receives the Outstanding Student Research Achievement Award from the biophysics program.
   
• May 2007 - Jeff Stevens receives the 2007 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award of the American Physics Teaching Association.
   
• April 2007 - Justin Link wins the 2007 Graduate Associate Teaching Award, one of 10 individuals from a pool of approximately 2,500 GTAs to receive the highest teaching award for graduate students. The award includes a plaque and $1500. He also won the 2006 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award of the American Physics Teaching Association.

2006

• September 2006 - Our recent research on hydration dynamics and protein-water interactions was featured in Research News.
   
• June 2006 - Our paper on HSA solvation dynamics was featured on the cover of J. Phys. Chem. B 110 (issue 21), 10540-10549.
   
• May 2006 - Weihong Qiu received the American Heart Association (AHA) Fellowship for the 2006-2008 academic years.
   
• January 2006 - Ya-Ting Kao received a travel award from the Biophysics society to present her research on DNA repair which will be held on February 19-23 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

2005

• November 2005 - Our work on real-time observation of DNA repair by photolyase was published in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102, 16128-16132.
   
• October 2005 - Dr. Dongping Zhong wins Packard Fellowship from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
   
• September 2005 - Our recent research on DNA repair by photolyase was featured in Research News and the Dispatch. 
   
• September 2005 - Our work on real-time observation of DNA repair by photolyase was published online in PNAS. 
   
• September 2005 - Oghaghare Okobiah received the graduate fellowship from the National Physical Science Consortium (NPSC) for three years (2005-2008).
   
• September 2005 - Our full paper on hydration dynamics in melittin folding and aggregation was published in J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 16901-16910.
   
• July 2005 - Ya-Ting Kao won the Research Excellence Award in Femtochemistry VII, the most prestigious femtosecond conference which finished recently in Washington DC.
   
• June 2005 - Justin Link and Jeff Stevens received the Hazel Brown Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.
   
• June 2005 - Chaitanya Saxena received the American Heart Association (AHA) Fellowship for the 2005-2006 academic year.
   
• June 2005 - Our paper on photoreceptor cryptochrome was published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 7984-7985.
   
• February 2005 - Our second paper on DNA photolyase reduction was published in J. Phys. Chem. B 109 (issue 4), 1329-1333.

2004

• December 2004 - Former group member Dr. Wenyun Lu joined Princeton University as a senior scientist on proteomics.
   
• November 2004 - Our paper on DNA photolyase reduction was featured on the cover of J. Phys. Chem. B 108 (issue 46), 18026-18033.
   
• July 2004 - Our paper on supramolecular recognition was published in Chem. Phys. Letters 394, 415-422.
   
• June 2004 - Chaitanya Saxena received the Hazel Brown Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.
   
• March 2004 - The first paper from Zhong's group was published in Chem. Phys. Letters 388, 120-126. The paper reported tryptophan solvation dynamics.