Aleksei Aksimentiev

Dr. Aksimentiev has a background in soft matter physics and now deploys computational methods to investigate physical phenomena at the interface of solid-state nanodevices and biological macromolecules. In his graduate work, he applied methods of field theory to predict phase diagrams of polymer mixtures, focusing on the conformational properties of single macromolecules. Subsequently, he discovered a universal scaling of the morphological measures quantitatively characterizing the topology of the three-dimensional patterns that emerge during the process of phase transition. In the focus of his current research program are systems comprising silicon-based synthetic membranes and biomolecules— DNA, proteins, and lipids—assembled into novel silicon circuits that can act as sensors, tweezers, and scaffolds for assembly of biosynthetic complexes.