We decided it was high time to make a proper webpage to showcase some of the great work done by our 'students' over the past two years. All told, we have had two successful runs of the Biological Physics Laboratory in the Applied Physics Department at Caltech (APh 162) and five week long intensive Bootcamps (August 2005, February 2006, October 2006, June 2007 and September 2007) which were immensely successful. The latest Bootcamp also involved the entering Bioengineering graduate students.

All of the courses are structured in a similar fashion - placing emphasis on the spatial and temporal scales associated with biological physics. We then center on molecular biology, gene expression and subsequent protein translation in vivo.

The courses finish with each group taking on a novel project to learn about a particular biological system, experimental method or biological material. In the past these have taken the form of optical trapping, sea urchin embryology, single-cell gene expression, lipid membrane mechanics, listeria and keratocyte motiliy, the developmental biology of dictyostelium, the dynamics and forces involved in phagocytosis by macrophages, and many others..

The information on this site is designed to be an overview, not a precise report of our results. We'd be happy to answer any specific questions (see Contact).