The Department of Biophysics began its activity in 1995 with the admission of
master students, and it has started enrolling Ph.D. students since 2001. The Teaching
staff currently consists of seven full-time faculty members.
Though biophysics is an interdisciplinary field belonging to the Faculty of Biological
Sciences, with the recent changes made in the selection of students at master programs,
it is now possible to admit not only the undergraduates of biology, but also the
undergraduates of physics and chemistry in this field of study.
Biophysics program consists of two major categories: Laboratory works and computational
studies (Bioinformatics). The laboratory works focus mainly on structural studies
of proteins by NMR, X-ray crystallography, AFM, DSC, CD, thermodynamic studies of
macromolecules, proteomics, design of pharmaceutical peptides, protein engineering,
interaction of them with cells in microfluidic systems, and effects of magnetic
fields on cells. Computational studies focus on systems biology, molecular dynamics
simulation methods, artificial neural network, genetic algorithm and other similar
methods used to study the relationship between the construction and function of
proteins, molecular design and the optimization and development of detection and
diagnosis methods. In the biophysics department, priority is placed on the study
of molecular understanding of life, and therefore molecular studies are emphasized
at this department.
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