The described research is tightly connected to the teaching process. I am (co-)adviser to two graduate students and lecture biophysics for the Master programme in Molecular Biology at the Faculty of Biotechnology. I also co-authored a textbook for the course. Besides that I was invited to serve as examiner for a PhD at Université Montpellier II and a licentiate at KTH Stockholm.
B.05 Guest lecturer at an institute/university
COBISS.SI-ID: 23527719We have presented our research on motor proteins in 6 invited conference talks within the last 5 years. These included the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting (San Diego, 2012), two Gordon Research Conferences on Muscle and Molecular Motors (2008 and 2011) and the ACS National Meeting (Philadelphia, 2008), which represent an audience of world's leading reserachers in the field of molecular motors and broader. The talks have been received with a lot of interest and therefore, along with publication in high-ranking journals, contribute to the international reputation of the research carried out in Slovenia.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 25647911Upon invitation by the editors the PI wrote a Viewpoint article for the on-line journal Physics, published by the American Physical Society (APS). Its aim is to put the most important articles from other APS journals in a broader context and present them to more general audience. The present contribution highlights the results of an article explaining the flagellar synchronization in the green alga Chlamydomonas. Its authors used a simple model to show that synchronization is not a direct consequence of hydrodynamic coupling between the flagella, but rather of the rocking motion of the cell. In this respect the phenomenon shows a lot of similarity with the synchronization of pendulum clocks, already observed in the 17th century by Christiaan Huygens.
D.11 Other
COBISS.SI-ID: 26113575We have established a collaboration with one british (Dr Burgess, Leeds) and two japanese groups (Dr Kon and Prof Higuchi, Tokyo) to investigate the motor protein dynein. The proposal was ranked first among about 700 applications at the prestigious and highly competitive Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) programme grant selection (2008). This is only the second time that such a grant was awarded to a group in Slovenia. The work is carried out in collaboration with Dr Andreja Šarlah (FMF) and Dr Franci Merzel (KI) and has already resulted in the developmentof a model for the dimeric dynein molecule.
D.01 Chairing over/coordinating (international and national) projects
COBISS.SI-ID: 23273511We fabricated a prototype system of artificial cilia that allows controlled fluid pumping in microfluidic applications. Amid strong competition in the field we were the first to successfully produce a working prototype. Such cilia have a high potential for lab-on-a-chip applications where they allow fluid pumping without external connections. Besides publication in PNAS, the results were also reported about in Nature Physics (news & views) and they were presented to a broader audience in the daily newspaper Delo.
F.08 Development and manufacture of a prototype
COBISS.SI-ID: 23251239