Dr. Chen SONG was invited to give a talk at the “Nationwide Mechanics Forum for PhD Students” and chaired a session at the College of Engineering of Peking University on 22 Sep 2019.

Dr. Chen SONG was invited to visit the Sugita Lab at Riken, and delivered a seminar entitled “Computational Studies of Ca++-permeable channels” on 27 August.

We organized a summer workshop and school, “Theoretical and Computational Biology: from Molecules to Systems“, at Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Center for Interdisciplinary Sciences, 1-4 August 2019. Around 24 speakers and 80 members participated. Dr. Chen SONG, Dr. Xuhui HUANG, and Dr. Jinbo XU organized the event, and the whole SONG group volunteered in the organization.

Dr. Chen Song was invited to attend the 1st KIAS-Beijing Workshop on Biological Sciences at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study and gave a seminar entitled “How Do Calcium Ions Permeate through the Ryanodine Receptor 1” on 4 July 2019.

Jiaxuan LI has joined us for her PhD study after a three-month rotation. Welcome on board!

Invited by Prof. Tong ZHU and Prof. John ZHANG, Dr. Chen SONG visited the NYU-ECNU Center for Computational Chemistry at NYU Shanghai on May 31, 2019, and gave a seminar entitled “Molecular details of gating in mechanosensitive ion channels”.

Invited by Dr. Chen SONG, Dr. Xin YI delivered a wonderful CQB seminar entitled “Elasticity and shape effects on the cell-nanomaterial interaction” on May 27. Dr. Xin YI is a principal investigator from College of Engineering, Peking University, and shares common interests on membranes with us.

Invited by Dr. Chen SONG, Prof. Yuji SUGITA, from the Theoretical Molecular Science Laboratory of RIKEN (Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, Japan), visited us on May 22-24.  He gave us a talk entitled “Machine Learning approach to link single-molecule FRET and MD simulations for understanding protein folding dynamics” on May 23, and had extensive discussions with us.

We studied the effect of the lipid bilayer composition on the orientation and conductance of the antimicrobial dermcidin channel. It was a collaborative project with the Sansom and de Groot group. The paper is now online at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2019.03.033

We had a spring retreat and played real-life counter strike.