“How can the events, in space and
time, which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism, be
accounted for by physics and chemistry?” “Life is an almost continuous process
of getting rid of disorder.” As a
physics undergraduate still learning ideal gas, I was shocked (and amazed!) by
Schrödinger’s What is Life?. Since then, I have been fascinated about a
subject called biophysics. My (under)graduate research were on molecular
biophysics using computer simulation based on classical physics laws. I twisted
out my lens a bit and moved into the field of systems biology during my
postdoc.
I joined UMTB in 2024. My lab mainly
focuses on developing and applying computational approaches using
physics/chemistry/bioinformatics/machine learning/AI to study Protein-Protein
Interactions on both molecular and systems level. From there, we aim to 1)
understand disease mechanisms by exploiting PPI interaction networks, 2)
identify key proteins for mutation design, vaccine design, and drug discovery,
3) eventually gain some insights from some angles on how life works.
Please visit our website (https://hzhao-lab.github.io/) for
recent news and research and feel free to contact for any questions.
