PI: Ehssan Nazockdast

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill. I am interested in self-organization, and transport of multiphase systems, particularly structures inside the cell and how structural and mechanical features impact specific cellular functions (link to my CV). 

In my group we combine a variety of computational and modeling tools, including continuum modeling, mesoscale and atomistic simulations and simple biophysical models with measurements from our wet lab collaborators to develop a mechanistic understanding of different cellular processes.

Our research lies at the interface of Fluid Dynamics, Soft Materials and Cell Biology, which is not unlike my own academic training in Chemical Engineering (Ph.D.), Applied Mathematics and Computational Biophysics (Postdoc).

Current Team Members:

Postdoctoral Students

Thomas Dombrowski (2024-Present)

Co-advised with Daphne Klotsa (APS, UNC-CH)

Graduate Students

Mahsa Mofidi (2021-2024)

JiaLi Zhu (2019-Present)

Co-advised with Paul Maddox and Kerry Bloom (Biology, UNC-CH)

Yuan Gao (2018-Present)

Co-advised with Ronit Freeman (APS, UNC-CH)


Alumni

Chris Edelmaier (2021-2023)

Software Engineer at Flatiron Institute (New York, NY)

Arijit Mahapatra (2022-2023)

Senior Research and Development Engineer at Gamma Technologies LLC

Postdoctoral students

Moslem Moradi (2018-2022)

Postdoc in Balazs group (U. Pittsburg)

Wenzheng Shi (2018-2023)

Courant Instructor and postdoctoral stundent (NYU, Courant Institute)

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Nima Mirzaeian (2019-2021)

Graduate Student (Michigan State)

Graduate Students

Kevin Cannon (2018-2023)

(co-advised with Amy Gladfelter, Duke University) Current position: Associate Editor at Springer, Nature

Brandy Kurtis (2019-2025)

(co-advised with Amy Gladfelter, Duke University)

Nick Lauersdorf (2019-2024)

(co-advised with Daphne Klotsa, APS UNC-CH). Current position: Data analyst at Advanced Medical Designs

Tom Kolb (2017-2020)

(co-advised with Daphne Klotsa, APS UNC-CH). Current position: Data Manager at Vanguard Charitable

We are actively looking for talented and passionate undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students to join our group.

If you’re interested please email Ehssan.