A doctoral student at the Cullen College of Engineering has earned the second place poster prize at the 28th Annual Sealy Center for Structural Biology & Molecular Biophysics (SCSB) Symposium.
Kosar Rahimi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department. Her advisor is Gül Zerze, an assistant professor in the department and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar.
“Participating in the SCSB symposium was a rewarding experience, and seeing our work recognized by the judges was fulfilling,” Rahimi wrote on LinkedIn.
Rahimi's research uses molecular simulations in an attempt to find biological health improvements.
“Molecular dynamics simulation holds immense potential in providing atomistic-level insights into the dynamic behavior of biomolecules,” she said. “However, two challenges persist: the accuracy of force fields and computational cost. The latter may lead to insufficient sampling of conformational states.”
“In the GHZ lab, we are applying advanced sampling techniques to overcome this. In our last study, we compared two sampling techniques for atomistic simulation of RNA tetraloops. Our findings suggest that MM-OPES simulations offer a cost-effective alternative to PTWTE-WTM simulations without compromising accuracy, paving the way for more expensive atomistic simulations of complex biomolecular systems.”
The details of this research are in a paper published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B by Zerze, Rahimi and Pablo Piaggi, Ikerbasque Research Fellow at CIC nanoGUNE in Spain.
“I want to give special thanks to Dr. Pablo Piaggi for his invaluable contribution, my amazing friends in the GHZ lab, and of course, Dr. Gül Zerze for her exceptional mentorship,” Rahimi said.
Rahimi started at UH in Fall 2021. She earned her B.E. in Chemical Engineering and her M.S. in Biomedical and Medical Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology in Iran. Her expected graduation date is in 2025.