Catalyzing Multidisciplinary Frontier Science

A submission to the Astera Institute's Essay Competition (astera.org/essay-competition/)

Some scientific projects begin with a principal investigator (PI), a long-term vision, a lab, and a grant or two to fund it. Others begin with a casual conversation over lunch. An example is a recent project I’m proud to have been a part of, which focused on quantifying how the rapid freezing process used in cryo-electron microscopy distorts the protein ensembles the method is meant to measure. This is a thorny problem at the intersection of structural biology, water and protein dynamics, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics. I could write way more about why this was an especially interesting…

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• Henry Zimmerman

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