About the Lab

Proteins are fundamental to the molecular machinery of life: they are nature's freight trains, construction cranes, and chemical factories. But the basic principles of this machinery are poorly understood. By developing new algorithms that combine machine learning, molecular simulation, and chemical physics, we seek to unpack fundamental protein biochemistry and help develop new therapeutics.

Lab Values

We are curious. Science is about learning, not knowing. We are always looking for new ways of thinking, and are comfortable showing that we don't understand everything.
We are open. Science is a team sport. To help out teammates, we take pains to share our science freely amongst the scientific community and with the world.
We are caring. Doing good science requires delving deep into the unknown: an experience both exciting, and terrifying. On our journey, we celebrate each other's achievements and support each other through setbacks.
We are inclusive. We actively strive to make science a place where everyone thrives, no matter their background and identity. We resist oppression of any kind, including but not limited to sexism, classism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and xenophobia. Everyone is welcome and celebrated here.

People

Erik Henning Thiede

Erik is a Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago working with Profs. Aaron Dinner and Jonathan Weare. He then did a postdoc at the Flatiron Institute CCM, working with Prof. Risi Kondor, Dr. Pilar Cossio, and Dr. Sonya Hanson.

Personal Webpage.

Jake Moomaw

Jake is a moonshot enthusiast who has worn many hats: algorithms researcher, amateur chemist, software engineer, roboticist, vulnerability researcher and electronics hobbyist. He is currently in the lab as a joint undergraduate researcher and part-time software developer.

Jeffrey Xiang

Jeffrey is a junior studying computer science with an external specialization in chemistry. He has previously worked in software engineering and is interested in solving computational and numerical problems in chemistry.

LinkedIn.

Joshua Rhodes

Joshua is a graduate student in the Cornell Chemistry Department. His work focuses on developing new probabilistic machine learning algorithms for cryo-EM data.

Diego Sanchez Espinoza

Diego is a graduate student in the Cornell Center for Applied Math, jointly advised by Prof. Yunan Yang. His work focuses on applying Wasserstein flows to the analysis of cryo-EM data.

Kawamura

Kawamura is a graduate student in the Cornell Biophysics program. She works on expanding the limits of cryo-EM to work on protein disordered regions.

Wenzhe Chen

Wenzhe Chen is a graduate student joint with Hening Lin at the University of Chicago. He works on finetuning and repurposing structure prediction tools to better match experimental data.

Kwanghwi Je

Kwanghwi Je is a postdoctoral researcher. He earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan. His expertise lies in using molecular simulation techniques to investigate biomolecular dynamics and phase behavior of colloidal nanoparticles. Beyond the lab, he enjoys running and exploring new places.

Hailey Foster

Hailey is a sophomore at Cornell University interested in chemistry. She currently works with molecular dynamics techniques and is interested in investigating both the computational and experimental aspects of chemistry.

Yafet Nagesh

Yafet is a sophomore at Cornell University. He is working on developing algorithms to analyze cryo-EM images of nanoparticles.

The Thiede Lab

@ Cornell