Marcos R' Betancourt

1
Marcos R. Betancourt

• Current position Assistant Professor, Physics
  Dept., IUPUI
• Education
• PhD,MS University of California, San Diego -
  Physics/Bio-Physics, Jose Onuchic, advisor
• BS University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez - Physics

• Previous Experience
• Research Scientist UB Center of Excellence in
  Bioinformatics
• Research Scientist Donald Danforth Plant Science
  Center
• Postdoc Jeff Skolnick group, St. Louis, MO
• Postdoc Dave Thriumalai group, IPST, U of
  Maryland, College Park

2
Main Research Interests

• Coarse-grained protein modeling
• Protein dynamics thermodynamics
• Protein structure determination
• Protein sequence design
• Protein-protein -ligand interactions
• Biomolecules (RNA, lipids, etc.) coarse-grained
  modeling

3
Main Methods Used

• Monte Carlo methods for structure, dynamics, and
  design simulations
• Langevin dynamics
• Statistical potential determination from
  structure databases
• Molecular Dynamics simulations

4
Significant Discoveries

• Determined the properties of the energy
  landscapes of proteins responsible for folding
  kinetics and thermodynamics.
• Developed a method for de novo sequence design
  that optimizes the folding stability and
  dynamics.
• MR Betancourt and D Thirumalai, J. Phys. Chem. B,
  106, 599-609 (2002)
• Developed a fast Monte Carlo method for dynamic
  simulations.
• MR Betancourt, J. Chem. Phys., 123, 174905 (2005)