Continued success for CPLC Summer School

The Center for the Physics of Living Cells (CPLC), an NSF Physics Frontier Center based in the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recently completed its third annual Physics of Living Cells Summer School, held from July 18-23, 2011, on the Urbana campus. The summer school is designed for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and researchers who seek to expand their skills in these fields and apply these technologies to their research.

“The CPLC Summer School was a fantastic experience to learn about innovative and current research ongoing at the interface between physics and the life sciences," said Steven Quinn, a graduate student from University of St. Andrews, Scotland. "I not only gained valuable new insights into single-molecule techniques, many of which will be applicable to my own research, but was able to discuss my own work and share ideas with my peers in such a prestigious biophysics department. The basic training in conjunction with the advanced module provides a solid basis for any single-molecule biophysicist looking to expand his/her own knowledge of the field.”

This year, nine participating faculty from UI Departments of Physics and Chemistry, as well as the Baylor University College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, offered four-day intensive training in eight advanced topics with an emphasis on integration of theory and computational biology with experimental systems.

These topics included: 1) Single-molecule FRET: (Taekjip Ha with theory integration by Zan Luthey-Schulten and Karin Dahmen); 2) Single-molecule FIONA (Paul Selvin with theory integration by Klaus Schulten and Karin Dahmen); 3) Single-molecule force and optical trapping: (Yann Chemla with theory integration by Alek Aksimentiev); 4) Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy – STORM (Taekjip Ha), 5-6) Single-event detection in living cells – bacterial swimming (Ido Golding and Yann Chemla) and phage infection (Ido Golding); 7) Membrane dynamics in living fruit fly embryos (Anna Sokac), and 8) Fast Relaxation Imaging: heat shock response in living cells (Martin Gruebele). The advanced modules were complemented by faculty lectures and concluded with student presentations.

One of the key elements of the continued success of the summer school is the near 1:1 ratio of teaching assistants (TAs) to students. This year, a group of  26 TAs comprising Center graduate students and postdoctoral fellows were involved not only in teaching the specialized advanced modules, but also in developing and teaching of introductory mini-courses on Optics, Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD), MATLAB and LabVIEW programming applications. 

Thus, the CPLC summer school provides a unique opportunity for hands-on training in state-of-the-art biophysical tools for the next generation of scientists as well as for the Center’s own trainees, who also gain valuable teaching experience. For example, one unique form of training for both TAs and students evolved as a result of TAs from different labs working directly together to integrate theory and experiment within an advanced module. The summer school also offered venues for scientific and social interactions such as a poster session for members of CPLC laboratories to share their research with visiting students. 

All in all, the CPLC summer school continues to lay a foundation for fostering and training a global network of young scientists interested in the physics of living systems.