Karl Decker
e-mail: 
kdecker4@illinois.edu
phone: 
(217) 721-1774
office: 
265 LLP

Loomis Laboratory of Physics
1110 West Green Street
Urbana, IL 61801-3080

The transport of molecules through nanosized apertures in membranes, nanopores, is a critical part of the quickly growing field of biophysics. I study the details of nanopore transport interactions using NAMD, an N-body molecular dynamics simulation program designed for modeling the behavior of systems at the atomic scale. My work so far has led me to characterize ionic and other transport through both synthetic and biological nanopores. I aim to pioneer foundational research into new technologies such as nanofluidics and highly efficient desalinization.

Publications

  1. Trevor Gamble, Karl Decker, Timothy S. Plett, Matthew Pevarnik, Jan-Frederik Pietschmann, Ivan Vlassiouk, Aleksei Aksimentiev, and Zuzanna S. Siwy. "Rectification of Ion Current in Nanopores Depends on the Type of Monovalent Cations: Experiments and Modeling." The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 118:9809-9819 (2014).
  2. Yue-xiao Shen, Wen Si, Mustafa Erbakan, Karl Decker, Rita De Zorzi, Patrick O. Saboe, You Jung Kang, Sheereen Majd, Peter J. Butler, Thomas Walz, Aleksei Aksimentiev, Jun-li Hou, and Manish Kumar. "Highly permeable artificial water channels that self-assemble into two-dimensional arrays." Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 112:9810-9815 (2015).