First Name
Steven
Middle Name
S
Last Name
Plotkin
Position
Professor
Office Room
Hennings 401
Tel (Office)
(604) 822-8813
Email


Students Wanted
willing to supervise



Bachelor's Degree
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1992, Physics

Master's Degree
University of Illinois,Urbana-Champaign, 1994, Physics

Doctoral Degree
University of Illinois,Urbana-Champaign, 1998, Physics

Employment History

NSF post-doctoral fellow in Bioinformatics, UCSD, 1998-2001; Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Molecular Biophysics, UBC 2001-2011; Associate Professor of Physics 2010-present.


Awards

Tier II Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Biomolecular Physics, University of British Columbia, Nov 2001-Nov 2005.

Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, 2005-2009. 

Renewal, Tier II Canada Research Chair, UBC, May 2006-2010

UBC Killam Faculty Research Fellowship, 2010.

Faculty of 1000 Designation for 5 of my articles, most recently in 2011. According to the F1000 manifest, this places these works in the top 2% of published articles in biology and medicine.


Research Area
Biophysics

Research Field
Theory, Computation, and Experiment

Research Topics
Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Protein Misfolding & Aggregation, Molecular origins of neurodegenerative disease, Genetic networks, Coarse-graining in biomolecular modelling

Research Title
On the wild and wonderful world of biological physics:

Abstract

We do research at the interface of physics, molecular biology, cell biology, and genetics. 

Our interests range from the study of cell differentiation in developmental biology, to the evolution of genetic networks, to interactions, dynamics, and disorder in protein misfolding.

The Plotkin Research Group at UBC regularly seeks excellent students and post-doctoral fellows with outstanding academic records, and more importantly an unrelenting curiosity along with the motivation to experiment and investigate the consequences of a new idea. 

Our group members enjoy an exciting and interactive lab atmosphere, access to state-of-the-art computational and experimental resources, and the option for extensive collaborations with other research groups in physics, and the biological sciences. If you are a talented and self-motivated student or PDF who is interested in having a career in theoretical, computational, or experimental biophysics-- one the fastest growing interdisciplinary research areas in the sciences-- you may wish to consider joining us. We welcome NSERC and other scholarship holders and provide top-ups. For more information see http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~steve/prospective_students.html


Selected Publications