Gaurav Arya

Assistant Professor, Nanoengineering

Theoretical modeling and simulation of gene regulatory systems and biomolecular engineering

Professor Arya’s research focuses on the development and application of cutting-edge theoretical and computational methods to elucidate fundamental mechanisms of gene regulation and aid in the rational design of biomolecules and nanosystems. One of his research interests involves explaining the fascinating mechanism by which histone proteins help pack DNA inside our cells and regulate gene expression through their biochemical modifications. Another topic of interest is in RNA modeling, especially in the development of mesoscale models of RNA that can predict both their tertiary structure and the folding pathways and their interaction with proteins. Arya is also interested in many aspects of protein-DNA recognition. He is studying the transport mechanism by which gene regulatory proteins search for their target genes from millions of DNA sequences, and computationally optimizing the design of short peptides for targeting specific DNA sequences. Arya’s research has many practical applications in gene regulation, cancer, epigenetics, gene and siRNA delivery, and RNA interference.

Capsule Bio:
Gaurav Arya joined the Department of Nanoengineering at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering as an Assistant Professor in 2007. He is also affiliated with the Materials Science and Bioinformatics graduate programs at UCSD. He obtained his B. Tech. degree in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1998, and Ph.D. degree, also in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Notre Dame in 2003. He did his postdoctoral research at Princeton University and held an Assistant Research Scientist position at New York University prior to arriving on campus. He has made many notable scientific contributions in the fields of nanoscale transport phenomena, polymer science, and biophysics.