News

Marie, Cathrine and Erik represented the Molecular Biophysics group at the Berzelius days at Stockholm University January 25-26th 2019. High-school students were introduced to interesting aspects of biophysics and had the opportunity to explore a structure involved in the formation of the skin barrier using Oculus Rift. Hopefully this has sparked the interest of future research talents.

Eight members of Molecular Biophysics Stockholm helped host an international workshop on Sharing Data from Molecular Simulations, 25–27 November on Lidingö in the Stockholm archipelago. Researchers from 13 institutions in 8 countries sought to explore and improve the dissemination of data and code related to molecular simulations and related methods in computational biology/chemistry. Major topics included:

• Standardization of file formats
• Tools for trajectory sharing
• Streamlining molecular simulations data
• Reproducibility of molecular simulations

Lucie Delemotte and Reba Howard co-organized the workshop with Matthieu Chavent (IPBS), Daniel Smith (MolSSI), and Mikael Trellet (Utrecht), with sponsorship from Rossen Apostolov at BioExcel. Among the participants were session chair Mark Abraham and invited speaker Erik Lindahl.

Although this exploratory workshop was limited in scale, organizers sought to maximize transparency by live-tweeting the proceedings (#SDMS18) and making videos of all talks and roundtable discussions, as well as original presentation slides, available for download via BioExcel.

A follow-up event, organized by MolSSI, is planned for 2019 in the USA.

Molecular Biophysics Stockholm was the first external research site to host US undergraduates through the recently launched DIS-Study Abroad in Scandinavia Stockholm program in Fall 2018. Under the supervision of Reba Howard, Isabel Anaya (Northwestern University) and Jaewon Kang (Vassar College) worked ≥20 hours per week on independent research projects in the Ligand-Gated Ion Channels team throughout the term. Both presented posters on their work at the DIS End-of-Semester Symposium, 11 December 2018 at Stockholm’s Kungliga Musikhögskolan.

Two new DIS students will initiate research projects with the team in Spring 2019. For more information, contact Reba or DIS-Stockholm.

Five members of Molecular Biophysics Stockholm presented their research and discussed prospective collaborations at the 2nd Stockholm-Tokyo University Partnership Workshop, held this year in Japan, 28–30 October 2018. Among others, Erik Lindahl co-chaired a plenary session on Biological Mechanisms Regulating Healthy and Maladaptive Aging, and co-coordinated a satellite workshop on New Technologies: Multiscale Computation. Following the workshop, group members were generously hosted by their University of Tokyo colleagues in multiscale simulations and electron microscopy for a traditional meal in the Hongō district.

The 2018 workshop, 17–19 October in Göttingen, set out to provide opportunities for GROMACS developers and power-users to use or implement their own enhanced simulation protocols, involving for example fast multipole methods, constant pH, or experimental constraints from microscopy/spectroscopy. Key questions included:

• How can a highly optimized, parallel simulation code provide a general infrastructure that allows incorporation of new methods in a straightforward way?
• Can it do so without sacrificing (parallel) performance?
• Can the software be made less monolithic and blackbox-like, but more modular and extensible?
• Can providing an own method become less of a challenge for the average scientist who is not at the same time a GROMACS coding expert?

Thanks to sponsors BioExcel and SPPEXA, and to the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics group at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry for venue and other support.