Featured Faculty

portrait of George Thurston

George Thurston

College of Science

Dr. Thurston and his collaborators are focused on gaining a deeper understanding of the quantitative, physical nature of interactions among protein molecules and other biological macromolecules, about how these inter- actions affect the nature of their liquid solutions, and about the relationships of these interactions to normal and pathophysiology. Remarkably small changes in protein interactions can trigger phase transitions and other changes that underlie diseases including cataract, sickle-cell disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and dozens of others. To quantitatively understand the physics of the molecular interactions and kinetics that underly each of these diseases, new experimental and theoretical tools are needed in order to gain more re ned knowledge about the intermolecular forces, the probabilistic liquid and other structures, and the statistical thermodynamics of the concentrated mixtures of biological molecules that are relevant in each case.

View All submissions by George Thurston