TCBG Profile
| Rafael Bernardi is an Assistant Professor of Biophysics at the Department of Physics at Auburn University, and an external faculty member of the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group. Before joining Auburn's faculty, Dr. Bernardi was a Postdoc (2012-2017), and then a Research Scientist (2017-2020), at the TCBG at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois. Dr. Bernardi concluded his PhD in Biophysics, in 2010, at the Carlos Chagas Filho Institute of Biophysics at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), advised by Prof. Pedro G. Pascutti. With a major in Physics (2005) and a Master degree also in Physics (2007), Rafael did an internship in 2008, during his PhD studies, at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Center for Molecular Modeling, working with Prof. Michael L. Klein and Prof. Werner Treptow. During his PhD, Rafael worked mainly with molecular dynamics studies of anesthetics and their effect in both biological membranes and the TREK-1 potassium channel. This work awarded him the Best Thesis Award in Biophysics and Biotechnology in 2010 by the Secretariat of Strategic Affair of the Brazilian Presidency. He is also a collaborator in several studies simulating biological membranes, and was responsible for the first QM/MM dynamics of lipid membranes in which some lipids were studied in the DFT level. For the last couple of years, Rafael has been working with molecular modeling of cellulose, cellulases and cellulosomes, first at INMETRO (Brazil), in a group that aims to develop a new second-generation biofuel, and more recently, at TCBG. |  Rafael C. Bernardi |
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