Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Stanford University

Grant Rotskoff is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Stanford. He studies the nonequilibrium dynamics of living matter with a particular focus on self-organization from the molecular to the cellular scale. His work involves developing theoretical and computational tools that can probe and predict the properties of physical systems driven away from equilibrium. Recently, he has focused on characterizing and designing physically accurate machine learning techniques for biophysical modeling. Prior to his current position, Grant was a James S. McDonnell Fellow working at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in the Biophysics graduate group supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. His thesis, which was advised by Phillip Geissler and Gavin Crooks, developed theoretical tools for understanding nonequilibrium control of the small, fluctuating systems, such as those encountered in molecular biophysics. He also worked on coarsegrained models of the hydrophobic effect and self-assembly. Grant received an S.B. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago, where he became interested in biophysics as an undergraduate while working on free energy methods for large scale molecular dynamics simulations.

Interests

  • Nonequilibrium Dynamics
  • Biophysics
  • Machine Learning, theory and practice

Education

  • James S. McDonnell Fellow

    Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University

  • PhD in Biophysics

    University of California, Berkeley

  • SB in Mathematics

    University of Chicago

  • High School

    Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy