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Ken A. Dill

Distinguished Professor

Laufer Family Endowed Chair of Physical and Quantitative Biology

1978 Ph.D. Biology Department, UCSD, La Jolla
1981 Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemistry, Stanford Univ.

Phone: (631) 632-5400
Email: Ken.Dill@stonybrook.edu, dill@laufercenter.org

google scholar page

Research Interests

Computational modeling of proteins.  We develop theory and computer simulations to understand how proteins fold and aggregate, their binding affinities for drugs and other proteins, and the processes by which they form amyloid assemblies in disease. Our simulation methods under development include the SEA model of water and the MELD method for fast guided searching of protein conformational spaces.

Understanding cell behaviors in terms of the physical chemistry of the proteome.  An important property of cells is their growth laws: how a cell's growth rate depends on how much food it is given, temperature, salt, proteome oxidation or other factors. We develop statistical physics models to explain cell behaviors and growth laws in terms of the physical properties of the cell’s proteins.

Maximum Caliber: a principle of nonequilibrium statistical physics.  Much of today’s modeling of kinetics in chemistry and biology is about kinetic averages — of rates, velocities or fluxes. But because of important advances in single-molecule, single-cell, and few-particle experimental technologies, there is now also much interest in understanding whole kinetic rate distributions. We are exploring Maximum Caliber, a principled approach to theory and modeling of rate distributions.

Dill publications