Greg Voth has been awarded the 2021 Biophysical Society Innovation award, one of their major international awards, for his transformative theoretical and computational approaches to understanding complex biomolecular systems.
“The primary technique to study biological systems at the molecular level for many years has been atomistic molecular dynamics simulations,” says Voth. “Real problems in biology can defy this technique as they are very complex, multi-scale systems.”
The Voth group has made strong efforts to jump over the barriers to these methods. One such technique is called coarse-graining, which accurately simplifies the problem to achieve computational efficiency so as to access much larger time and length scales.
These methods give a deeper insight into the cellular membrane, cell cytoskeleton, and the self-assembly of proteins. Pressing questions related to human health have also been explored including HIV, influenza, and now, Voth has set his sights on understanding SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19.
“I haven’t taken a biology course beyond high school so it took a lot of courage to dig into the subject,” explained Voth, “I have a lot of respect for biological researchers and try to approach them with humility, but they usually recognize that I can do something novel to address their problems.”
The research into these computational methods started at the University of Utah but went into overdrive once Voth came to the University of Chicago. “Scholars at UChicago are often fearless,” said Voth. “It is also a very interdisciplinary environment that attracts some of the best postdocs and graduate students in the world.”
Voth looks forward to continuing to contribute innovative theoretical and computational methodologies to the field. “For example, computational virology will only get more important,” says Voth. “And working with my group at UChicago is the ideal environment for such discoveries.”