PHYS 498 BP :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Connections between biology and physics
This course is meant for advanced undergraduate or graduate students in Physics who have pondered the connection between biology and physics. Physics has played a revolutionary role in biology, creating instruments (ultra-resolution microscopy, cryo-EM) that allow us to see entirely new realms of space and time, modeling biological processes such as protein folding in unprecedented detail using realistic force fields, and developing theoretical frameworks such as energy landscapes to tie together disparate biological observations. The world of living things – biology – is constrained by the laws of physics and likewise, there is new and interesting physics to be found in biological systems. The course highlights such topics of current interest and is team-taught by Physics and Biophysics Faculty in two-week segments designed to build upon each other. Readings, Homework/Reports/Data analysis will be assigned, using software packages such as Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD).