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This year the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois celebrates its 25th anniversary. To put this anniversary in perspective, I'd like to share with you some of the research that reflects the institute's long history of accomplishment in state-of-the-art science and technology:
In the 1990s, William Greenough, a psychologist and one of Beckman's founders, upended conventional thinking with research showing that the brain wasn't hardwired, as previously believed, but that it could continue to be shaped throughout our lives by factors such as the environment and experience -- a concept known as brain plasticity.
Klaus Schulten and his group perform amazing dynamic molecular scale simulations, giving never-before-seen views of biological processes using petascale processing power. They used the Blue Waters supercomputer at Illinois in order to construct a full model of the HIV capsid. Possessing a chemically detailed structure of the HIV capsid allows researchers to further investigate how it functions, with implications for pharmacological interventions to disrupt that function.
A large and diverse research team at the Beckman Institute, of which I am a member, examines how various techniques -- from learning a new hobby to simply walking 40 minutes a day -- can improve memory, problem solving and attention and...