About
Dr. Albert A. Smith-Penzel is a Principal Investigator at the Institute for Medical Physics and Biophysics, University of Leipzig Medical Faculty. He leads a DFG-funded project titled "Disentangling dynamics in biomolecules with experiment and simulation" since 2021, following his 2019-2020 Research Associate position at the same institution.
- B.Sc. in Physics, University of Mount Union (2007)
- Ph.D. in Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2012)
- Postdoctoral Researcher at ETH-Zürich (2012-2018)
His research focuses on biomolecular dynamics characterization through advanced NMR relaxation techniques combined with molecular dynamics simulations. He pioneered detector analysis methods for correlating experimental and computational dynamics data, addressing challenges in motion amplitude quantification across multiple timescales.
Recent publications highlight his work on:
- Dynamic landscapes of bio-membranes
- Energy landscapes of GPCRs
- Model-free analysis of protein fibrils
- Software development for NMR analysis (INFOS, DIFRATE)
He actively develops open-source tools for dynamics analysis and contributes to understanding how distributed motions influence macromolecular function.
