Biophysics

Biophysicists look at biological systems, ask how their structure and function are explained by the laws of physics, and then apply physical methods to understand biological structure and function. Research on molecular mechanisms of fundamental biological processes and of biomedical diagnostics is pushing the limits of physics. Several faculty members in the graduate field of applied physics and their research groups have strong research and teaching activities in biophysics. These groups have also developed interdisciplinary collaborations with Cornell faculty, both in Ithaca and at Weill Cornell Medical College, as well as with other groups worldwide. 

The research groups working in the field of biophysics are highly interdisciplinary, including students and postdoctoral associates from fields such as applied physics, physics, biophysics, electrical engineering, chemistry, biochemistry, neurobiology, and other fields of the life sciences. 

Research topics currently investigated encompass studies of biological activity across many length and time scales. The following representative examples indicate the broad scope of current research activities.  In one group, instrumentation is being developed to permit imaging deep inside of living tissues. Another set of projects focuses on biological processes at the cellular level, including studies of how cells communicate (exocytosis, intracellular signaling, neurotransmitter release).  State of the art tools employed in this research include multiphoton and confocal microscopy, patch clamping, and optical tweezers.  On the molecular level, both micro and nanofabrication techniques are employed to probe processes ranging from protein or RNA folding to DNA sequencing.  Much of the Biophysics work relies on the presence of unique facilities and centers at Cornell, including the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, the Developmental Resource for Biophysical Imaging Opto-Electronics, the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility and the Cornell NanobiotechnologyCenter. 

For graduate students, support is available through fellowships from the National Institutes of Health Molecular Biophysics Training Grant, the Keck Program in Cellular and Molecular Biophysics of Signal Transduction, and the CornellNanobiotechnologyCenter.