Dr. David Mathews, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics; Biophysics, Structural and Computational Biology PhD Program
Honors
Best Biophysics Student Seminar Award, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Rochester (May 2017)
J. Newell Stannard Graduate Student Scholarship Award, University of Rochester (September 2015)
Leon Miller Fellowship Award, University of Rochester (April 2015)
Outstanding Undergraduate Student, Department of Physics, University of Alabama at Birmingham (April 2015)
National Merit Scholar (January 2011)
Research Experience
Vladimir Parpura, Civitan International Research Center, Department of Neurobiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA, June 2013–April 2015. Develop experimental and computational analysis of the trafficking of secretory vesicles in cultured astrocytes. Investigate the role of glial fibrillary acidic protein in trafficking of secretory vesicles in wild-type and Alexander disease mouse models.
Molly Bray, Training Intervention and Genetics of Exercise Response (TIGER) Study, Department of Epidemiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA, August 2011–May 2013.
Examine the influence of gene expression and epigenetics on the response to an exercise protocol. Extract DNA from human blood samples for genotyping and conduct physical examinations of study participants.
Current Research
Improve the computational description of the structural ensemble adopted by RNA molecules. Optimize the nonbonded parameters in the AMBER force field for classical molecular dynamics simulation of RNA molecules by fitting parameters to energies obtained from electronic structure calculations over a dataset of experimental RNA structures. Use molecular dynamics to investigate the binding interaction between an evolved peptide motif and the HIV-1 trans-activation response element RNA hairpin.
