Welcome to the Kubarych Group

Our research is at the intersection of Chemistry, Physics and Biology. We ask questions that will help us to learn the basic design and functional principles behind the structure and function of biological molecules. Ultimately we would like to know why nature has chosen to shape her structures the way she has. "Why" questions, however, are very difficult to address, so we will begin by investigating how proteins work, how they interact with their surroundings, and how they interact with other proteins. This understanding would put us in a very powerful position to design, alter and manipulate chemical structure and reactivity in a rational way. Embedded within a broader context of structural biology, we might see the day where drug design and bioengineering are truly based on microscopic molecular foundations.

Did you know that 50% of all drugs target in some way or another a class of proteins called G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs)? And if you did, did you know that only a tiny number of GPCRs have known crystal structures? Clearly, these drugs were not designed using a microscopic picture, since there isn't one!

Our group uses different kinds of ultrafast, nonlinear optical spectroscopy to follow biological molecular dynamics. The basic driving force is to develop a bond-by-bond view of real-time motion in these wonderfully complex, mesoscopic systems.

Learn more about our group...

A powerful new experimental tool to unravel complex condensed phase dynamics.

Biological molecules do interesting things on an amazing range of time scales—from a couple femtoseconds to break a bond, all the way out to milliseconds to completely fold.

Find out about joining our new dynamic group, where you might fit in, and what you would get out of the experience. There will be opportunities at all three levels in the next few years.