CPLC summer school delivers intensive experiences in biological physics

The Center for the Physics of Living Cells (CPLC), an NSF-funded physics frontier center at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, recently ran its 4^th annual CPLC Summer School from July 30-August 4.

The Summer School brings scientists from all over the world to the UIUC campus for intensive research training in experimental single-molecule, live-cell, computational and theoretical biophysics. The Center, co-directed by physics faculty, Taekjip Ha and Klaus Schulten, includes professors from UIUC physics, bioengineering, chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology as well as Baylor University and University of Notre Dame who develop and apply these tools to create a quantitative high resolution picture of cellular processes such as DNA replication, cell motility, protein folding, cytoskeletal motors, gene expression, and translation. 

“The CPLC summer school gave me the opportunity to learn fine experimental details at a level not possible any other way," remarked Samuel Leachman from University of California, Berkeley. "You could read dozens of papers and work by yourself for months and still not get the insight you gain here.” 

According to Jaya Yodh, CPLC Director of Education and Outreach and Summer School organizer, the CPLC Summer School has trained 122 students to date and is clearly gaining a reputation in the biological physics community, as evident by increasing numbers of applications from new institutions each year.

The 2012 Summer School was the largest thus far with 38 participants--one undergraduate, 27 graduate students, seven postdoctoral fellows, one research scientist, and two assistant professors spanning disciplines of physics, biophysics, engineering, chemistry, biochemistry, and cell biology, with 23% coming from International institutions and 44% of the US student representation from universities in the Midwest. 

The week-long program began with two days of basic training elements including faculty lectures, CPLC poster sessions, and mini-courses in total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRF) optics as well as Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD), MATLAB, and LabVIEW software. Subsequently, students received 3.5 days of intensive training in one of the following ten specific advanced modules taught by the following CPLC summer school faculty labs:

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  Computational Analysis of Ribosome Structure, Function, and Networks (Klaus Schulten and Zan Luthey-Schulten)
• Fast Relaxation Imaging: Heat Shock Response Dynamics in Living Cells (Martin Gruebele)
• Following Transcription Kinetics in Individual Cells (Ido Golding, Baylor University)
• Membrane Dynamics In Living Fruit Fly Embryos (Anna Sokac, Baylor University)
• Optical Trapping & Fluorescence Imaging of Individual Swimming Cells (Ido Golding and Yann Chemla)
• Optical Trapping: Single-Molecule Force Spectroscopy of Protein-DNA Interaction (Yann Chemla)
• SiMPull: Single-Molecule Pull-Down (Taekjip Ha)
• Single-Molecule FRET (Taekjip Ha and Sua Myong)
• Single-Molecule FIONA (Paul Selvin)
• Super-Resolution Fluorescence Microscopy (Taekjip Ha and Paul Selvin)

A significant aspect to the CPLC summer school success was the near 1:1 ratio of students to teaching assistants (TAs). This year, 27 TAs – graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from CPLC labs – developed and taught the mini-courses and advanced modules, allowing them to gain critical teaching and research expertise. 

Alongside the hands-on training in state-of-the-art biophysical methods provided by the Summer school, the program offered a number of opportunities for both scientific and social networking between students, faculty, and teaching assistants. In many ways, the most vital impact of the Summer School was to provide a unique foundation for building not only the CPLC center community, but a global community of early-career scientists who will be responsible for shaping the future of biological physics.
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Contact: Jaya Yodh, director of education and outreach, Center for the Physics of Living Cells, 217/244-1155.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.