Profiles in Wake Forest Physics

Christine Carlisle

Christine Carlisle, a graduate student working with Professor Martin Guthold, is studying the mechanical properties of fibrin fibers, which are the major structural component of blood clots. In this project, Christine is using a combined atomic force/fluorescence microscopy technique to study the mechanical properties of different types of fibrin fibers. Her research will provide new insights into the wound healing process and into such diseases as heart attacks and strokes. Christine has presented her research as a poster at the 2008 Biophysical Society meeting (Long Beach, CA) and she gave a talk at the NanoMedicine conference in Winston-Salem in April 2008. Christine was also awarded a prestigious pre-doctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association for her proposal entitled "The mechanical properties of native and variant fibrin fibers."

Matthew Gottbrecht

Matthew Gottbrecht, a senior physics major at Wake Forest University, is doing research on protein structure and protein active site analysis with Professor Jacquelyn Fetrow in the Computational Biophysics Group. Matt’s project involves identifying the structural components that give rise to the different active site chemistry and substrate specificities found in the large enolase protein family. He is also involved in the Wake Forest rugby team and plans to attend medical school upon graduation. Matt presented his research as a poster at the Keystone Conference on Computational Drug Discovery in April 2008. During the summer 2008, Matt is participating in a medical internship program. Matt has the following observation about undergraduate research: “It's definitely a really cool feeling when you actually put to use the stuff you learn in the classroom—it actually motivates you to study harder so you know the material as well as possible.”

Sarah Klyap

Undergraduate student Sarah Klyap, an upperclass Carswell Scholarship recipient, is working with Professor Eric Carlson on searching for self-consistent wormhole solutions to the semi-classical Einstein equations. A wormhole is a connection between distant points in space time, but all known wormhole solutions require the existence of negative energy density, which can be realized in semi-classical gravity due to fluctuations of background quantum fields in curved spacetime. The main barrier to finding such solutions has been the difficulty of efficiently computing the expectation value of the stress-energy tensor in an arbitrary metric, particularly one that is derived from a table of values, rather than from an analytic formula. Sarah is working on developing efficient code that can work from an arbitrary metric and swiftly compute the resulting stress-energy tensor, which can then be used to compute the resulting metric due to Einstein’s equations, easing the search for such a solution. Sarah recently presented her work as an honors thesis to the Physics Department and was awarded the Speas award, the top honor for graduating physics majors. After graduation, Sarah will be participating in Teach For America in California.

Andrew Wall

Andrew Wall is working in the ultrafast laser laboratory of Professors Richard Williams and Burak Ucer. His research focuses on pulsed light emission and transient absorption in zinc oxide. The work is conducted in collaboration with the Center for Radiation Detection Materials & Systems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is aimed at optimizing the composition of ZnO as a scintillator for use in detection of dangerous materials. Andrew has co-authored a paper to appear soon in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. He presented his senior honors thesis on “Absorption and emission of light by electrons and holes in ZnO” as part of the April 24 WFU Physics Colloquium. Andrew is visiting Oak Ridge National Laboratory on May 1 along with Profs. Williams, Ucer and two other students for discussions of the results of the collaborative work. Andrew graduated in May, 2008, and will enter graduate study at the Optical Sciences Center of the University of Arizona in Fall 2008.

Pamela Wang

Undergraduate Pamela Wang and Professor Daniel Kim-Shapiro are studying how the protein hemoglobin binds to the small molecule nitrite. Nitrite is a key regulator of vasodilation. Kim-Shapiro and Wang hypothesize that the binding of nitrite to hemoglobin is a key intermediate in allowing delivery of nitrite to vascular tissues to cause the vasodilation. They are using EPR spectroscopy to measure the extent to which nitrite binds to hemoglobin in different buffers. Wang is double majoring in physics and chemistry. She presented some of her work as a co-author on a poster in the NIH nitrite meeting in September, 2007. Wang says the meeting was exciting because she “got to see how her research related to what other people were doing.” Besides participating in undergraduate research, Wang also volunteers in the emergency room at Baptist Hospital.

Cam Mateus

Cam Mateus is an undergraduate chemistry student, working in the Computational Biophysics research group, organized by Professors Jacquelyn Fetrow and Freddie Salsbury, at Wake Forest. One focus of this research group is in understanding how different members of protein families recognize their substrates. Ultimately, group members would like to be able to design inhibitors or drugs that are specific to individual members of a given protein family using only computer tools. Cam is working with Professor Fetrow on classifying the active site of members of the serine hydrolase protein family. This family is of interest because there has been much recent work on using chemical proteomics to identify the members of this protein family involved in diseases such as cancer. Cam has presented his work as a poster at the Keystone Conference on Computer Aided Drug Design in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Eric Sparks

Eric Sparks is a physics department alumnus. As an undergraduate student, Sparks studied the mechanical properties of fibrin fibers in the laboratory of Associate Professor Martin Guthold. Fibrin fibers are the major structural components of blood clots and, thus, their mechanical properties are extremely important for physiological function of clots, which is stemming the flow of blood in an injury. Eric’s research used a combined Atomic Force Microscopy/Fluorescence Microscopy technique to study these fibers and his work will advance our understanding of the behavior of blood clots, which has medical applications in wound healing, heart attacks and strokes. Eric is a co-author of three peer-reviewed research papers, one of them in the prestigious journal Science. In 2007, Eric won the Physics Department Speas award, an award given to a physics major who best exemplifies former Professor Speas' spirit and enthusiasm for physics. Eric is now a medical student at UAB.

Patrick Nelli and David Rosile

Undergraduate students Patrick Nelli and David Rosile are working together with Professors Martin Guthold and Keith Bonin to develop a new aptamer discovery method. Aptamers are a new group of three-dimensional DNA or RNA molecules that have the capability of binding very tightly and specifically to a target molecule. Thus, aptamers have enormous potential as novel therapeutic and diagnostic molecules. Patrick and David are using a combined Atomic Force Microscopy/Fluorescence Microscopy technique and PCR to select single aptamer species from a very large pool (109 molecules) of candidates. These students have attended the North Carolina Biophysics symposium and the Biophysical Society conference in Long Beach (CA) to present their research. Both are award winners--Patrick was awarded the prestigious Goldwater scholarship and David the Wake Forest University Hearn leadership scholarship.

Prof. Macosko and Entrepreneurship in Physics

Professor Jed Macosko is a major proponent of entrepreneurship in the sciences. His freshman seminar class, “Harnessing Life’s Molecular Machines: From AIDS Tests to Hydrogen Cars,” encourages students to look at the molecular level of cells for new product and process ideas that can be developed into entrepreneurial ventures. Last year six freshmen were so intrigued by this first-year seminar that they started a company, BioBotz, which aims to produce an educational interactive online game, an animated television series and ancillary stuffed toys and action figures starring characters based on the amino acid chains that operate like tiny robots inside human cells.

The students involved in this venture are Mike Metzmaker, of Massachusetts, Sara Branson of West Virginia, Ashley Edwards of Texas, Michael Epstein of Connecticut, Jane Lee of New Jersey and Elizabeth Newman of Ohio. None of the six students knew each other prior to attending the class, but after Macosko encouraged them to consider turning their classroom assignment into reality, they stayed in touch over the summer, developing the characters and storyline that will drive the company’s products. These students are now meeting weekly with Macosko to plot strategy for the week. The company’s ultimate goal is to help young children get a head start on understanding cell and molecular biology.