One of my strongest beliefs that I strive to communicate to the students is that biology must be quantitative. The current state of both biology and physics allows us to bridge these two disciplines not only by methods, but also by approaches to the experiments. I want my students to appreciate that most of the biological processes inside the cell are performed by single molecules. This approach opens the door to physical models to be applied to biomolecules and biopolymers.
Graduate and undergraduate level. I brought my current research project to MBL to let the students work with the cutting-edge single-molecule techniques.
I teach a part of the course that deals with the application of advanced optical systems to study forces produced by biomolecules and biopolymers.
Undergraduate level. I help the physics students build a simple optical trap and do simple calibrations.
Undergraduate level. I was leading a course that allowed the biophysics undergraduates to work on a laser tweezers.
Graduate and undergraduate level. This summer school provided fully funded time slots for students from any part of Russia to come and learn modern biophysical methods, including optical trapping, single-moleculer TIRF, flow cytometry etc.
Undergraduate level. I was teaching a course that introduced cell biophysics and biochemistry to physics undergraduates.
Vladimir Volkov — v.volkov@tudelft.nl — +31 15 278-4058 — @microtubule_guy