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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · 2d

This has now lodged into my head, preemptive apologies to the next few awesome associate professors who are celebrated for being mid

Erin Westgate @erinwestgate.bsky.social · 8d

My undergrads think the Diener Mid-Career Award is hilarious because to them it sounds like it’s for having a “mid” career 🫠

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · 7d

I was curious about the numbers. This claims that ~17% of postdocs are H1B holders: www.cupahr.org/resource/dat... - so this would be a de facto exclusion of those 17%. Probably more worrying is the difficulty hiring international faculty, who would mostly have to start on H1B

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · 7d

I think that's a pretty analogous case! Award given for early work that may not be the most influential of their career - but possibly the award wouldn't have been given without the later work. I guess Hinton for Boltzmann machines also fits - though that was also the most "physics" topic.

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · 8d

Conflict of interest note: really, I'm just cheering for grad school classmates who did some of the cool quantum computing work to get recognized.

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · 8d

Not that citations are everything, but there are papers from this same group in the past 10 years that have 3x the citations of the Nobel-winning ones from 1985! So it is interesting that the language is so carefully specific to focus on the initial work.

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · 8d

I feel like I can't be the only one who heard "John Martinis Nobel" and went, "Sure, that makes sense" - only to find that it's not for his recent work with superconducting qubits but his 1985 work as a grad student.

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 8d

Interesting bit of sociology: They are really studiously avoiding any mention of quantum computing. First and only mention came in the last few words of the presentation by Johansson.

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Markus Deserno @markusdeserno.bsky.social · 19d

I am super excited to announce that we have a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics open in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon! 🧪

Interfolio link: apply.interfolio.com/174360

PLEASE, share widely across the blue skies!

Let me briefly explain what we're looking for:

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Tenure-track Position in Biophysics at Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Physics

Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Open Date: Sep 19, 2025

Description
The Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics. The appointment is intended to be at the Assistant Professor level, but exceptional candidates at a higher level may also be considered. We seek outstanding candidates with a strong record in cellular and subcellular biophysics. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, uncovering how key characteristics of living systems arise from the interplay between supramolecular cellular structures, how the emergent cellular circuitry defines goals and enables robust decision making, and how metabolic resources are allocated. This encompasses understanding of how information is learned, stored, transduced, and processed across subcellular structures. Applicants with theoretical, data science, or experimental backgrounds within biological physics are encouraged to apply. The ideal candidate will strengthen and extend research programs of current biophysics faculty in the Department of Physics and collaborate with broader life science activities across many departments at CMU and the wider Pittsburgh area.

More details on Interfolio: https://apply.interfolio.com/174360

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Biophysical Society @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social · 21d

Sarah Veatch to Receive 2026 Agnes Pockels Award in Lipids and Membrane Biophysics buff.ly/AdSMhCT

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Reposted by Brian Camley

Biophysical Society @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social · 21d

Jie Xiao to Receive 2026 Carolyn Cohen Innovation Award
www.biophysics.org/news-room/ji...

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Qiwei Yu @qiweiyu.bsky.social · 22d

For the 2026 APS March Meeting, please consider submitting your abstract to our new focus session on Cellular Sensing and Signaling (04.01.29), which aims to bridge theory and experiments to understand how cells sense and respond to environmental signals.

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Daniel J. Cohen (Princeton) @djcohen.bsky.social · 28d

SCHEPHERD--the bioelectric cell herding platform built for YOU. Single cells, monolayers, organoids--this herds them all + new tricks. Plz try it-- we will *give* you parts! Teaser here of a steering a single cell. GS Yubin Lin's lifeblood with J. Yodh on piano; Celeste R. and Paul K. Thread 1/N

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Carlos Scheidegger @cscheid.net · Sep 12

I keep reading that it was important to the guy, but feels to me that 100000 Pascal wagers is really only about 1 bar bet

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Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · Sep 11

Being a professor is so weird. You are constantly having to act like you know things.

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arXiv q-bio.CB Cell Behavior @qbiocb-bot.bsky.social · Sep 3

Vishnu Srinivasan, Wei Wang, Brian A. Camley: Perfect adaptation in eukaryotic gradient sensing using cooperative allosteric binding https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00219 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.00219 https://arxiv.org/html/2509.00219

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

Fun membrane biophysics problem: how long will it take for continental diffusion to mix the continents? (Or for line tension to make their boundaries circular?)

Siewert-Jan Marrink @cg-martini.bsky.social · Sep 3

Martini on top of the world ! TS2CG as a Membrane Builder | Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

1/n New preprint: how eukaryotic cells could potentially adjust to new environments with perfect adaptation of their receptors (but why they probably might not). doi.org/10.48550/arX...

Diagram of "ternary complex" model with receptor switching between unbound, ligand-bound, ligand+allosteric protein bound, and only allosteric protein bound states

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

8/ Work led by Vishnu Srinivasan (JHU undergrad!) and Wei Wang @wwang721.bsky.social

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

7/ So: we think perfect adaptation at receptor level can be done using tools eukaryotic cells have. But we also see why cells don't (as far as we can tell) do this!

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

6/ But - there are a lot of caveats! There is a major tradeoff - adaptation requires either fast communication across the cell or it takes a long time to happen.

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

5/ In principle, this makes the cell's "effective" dissociation constant adapt perfectly to changes in the ligand concentration - ensuring ~50% of receptors are always bound,

$When ligand concentration c is changed, allosteric protein responds, and this leads the fraction of receptors bound to adapt back to 0.5$

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

4/ If an allosteric protein binds to the receptor, like in the first diagram, and this binding changes K_D to K_D/α, you want more of the allosteric protein to lower K_D to adapt to lower concentrations. So the idea is that bound receptors inactivate G and unbound receptors activate G.

$Diagram of feedback mechanism: G, which can bind to the receptor, switches to G*, which cannot. This switch is promoted by the bound receptor fraction, and the reverse by the unbound receptor fraction.$

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

3/ Could they somehow adapt their receptors? Bacterial cells do, with methylation, but so far, no evidence that eukaryotic cells do. We found that it's possible to adapt perfectly by having the cell change its internal concentration of an allosteric protein like a G protein

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

2/ To sense chemoattractant gradients, eukaryotic cells use receptors. The information you can get from these receptors is highest when chemoattractant concentration is around the attractant-receptor dissociation constant K_D. The problem: cells encounter a huge range of concentrations!

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Sep 3

1/n New preprint: how eukaryotic cells could potentially adjust to new environments with perfect adaptation of their receptors (but why they probably might not). doi.org/10.48550/arX...

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Brian Camley @diffusiveblob.bsky.social · Aug 29

J. Chem. Phys is one of my favorite journals but it is not one of my favorite websites

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