Prof. Roy Beck- Barkai

School of Physics and Astronomy
ביה"ס לפיזיקה ואסטרונומיה סגל אקדמי בכיר

Research

Prof. Roy Beck- Barkai works on a range of topics in biophysics, soft-matter physics and statistical mechanics. Beck’s research group is focused on the biophysical understanding of the forces and interactions governing the self-assembly of biomolecules into functional nanoscopic structures including the organization principles of cytoskeleton proteins within the neuronal system, intrinsically disordered proteins, membranes and nano-complexes of lipids and proteins. Their research combines various biochemical techniques to isolate and express desired products and advance microscopic and biophysical techniques such as small angle X-ray scattering to characterize the structures and their governing intermolecular forces.

 

Research achievements include: characterization of delayed and coordinated nucleation of supercooled phospholipid membranes; developing biophysical models to match the measured protein-based hydrogel mechanics and nanoscopic structures originated from the neuronal cytoskeleton; biophysical insights correlating structural phase transition in myelin sheaths as pathological marker for multiple sclerosis; developing information-based entropy estimators for computer simulation datasets.

 

Future directions include: developing novel techniques to measure in high throughput transient and reversible interactions between intrinsically disordered proteins; design, measure and model, hybrid polypeptide-hydrocarbon dendrimer amphiphiles that self-assemble into tunable nanoscale structures.

Education

  • B.Sc. in Physics & Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, 2002

  • Ph.D. in Physics, Tel-Aviv University, 2007

Academic Appointments

2015-            Associate Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

2010-2015    Senior Lecturer, School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

2006-2010    HFSP post-doctoral fellow in Biophysics, University of California, Santa-Barbara

Awards and Prizes

2004        Excellence in research award, Tel-Aviv University

2005        Raymond and Beverly Sackler prize in exact sciences for doctoral and postdoctoral student

2005        Excellence in research award, Tel-Aviv University

2006        Applied Material research excellence prize for graduate students 

2012        Best oral communication prize, IDP conference, Biochemistry Society,  York University

2017        Juludan Research Prize, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology 

 

List of publications 

 

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