Andrew Spakowitz

Andrew Spakowitz received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he completed his Ph.D. and M.S. studies in Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology in 2004. Prior to joining the Stanford School of Engineering in 2006, Professor Spakowitz was a postdoctoral scholar in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. The Spakowitz research lab is engaged in projects that address fundamental chemical and physical processes that underlie a range of key biological processes and cutting-edge materials applications. Research projects within his lab fall within three broads themes: DNA biophysics, charge transport in conjugated polymers, and protein self assembly. Their approach draws from a diverse range of theoretical and computational methods, including analytical theory of semiflexible polymers, polymer field theory, continuum elastic mechanics, Brownian dynamics simulation, equilibrium and dynamic Monte Carlo simulations, and analytical theory and numerical simulations of reaction-diffusion phenomena. A common thread within the research projects in the Spakowitz lab is the need to capture phenomena over many length and time scales, and their flexibility in research methodologies allows them to address these challenging problems.

Currently teaching