Biophysicist Joins Chemistry, Biochemistry Department

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Mahmoud Moradi

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - This fall, Mahmoud Moradi will join the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry as an assistant professor in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. He comes to the University of Arkansas from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was a postdoctoral research associate. 

 Moradi's research area is computational molecular biophysics. His research will be on developing ways to better simulate the large-scale motions of proteins at an atomic level.

"Proteins are the basic machinery of cells and machines have to move to work, but our ability to model and predict those microscopic motions is fairly limited," Moradi said. "Drugs, for example, often lock proteins into an active or inactive configuration, but better understanding of how proteins switch back and forth between such configurations could lead to designing better drugs."

Moradi is an editorial member of Nature Publishing Group's Scientific Reports. He has co-authored more than 20 articles with more in preparation.

"Dr. Moradi has a variety of fascinating research interests, from petascale supercomputing algorithms to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics," said Wesley Stites, department chair. "The proteins he will be simulating are involved in biomedically relevant processes such as membrane transport, multidrug resistance, and neurodegenerative diseases."

Moradi earned a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in physics from Sharif University of Technology. He holds a doctorate in physics from North Carolina State University.

About the Department: The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry strives for excellence in the central science by recruiting a diverse group of the best faculty, staff, and students to address the challenges of modern chemistry and biochemistry through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research and education.