Laufer Center Spring Retreat - 2026
86 West Meadow Road, Setauket, New York, 117331
Thursday, April 23, 2026
*By invitation only
8:30 AM: Check-in & Continental Breakfast
9:00AM – Dr. Ivet Bahar, Director of the Laufer Center, Opening Remarks and Introductions
9:30AM – Dr. Lina Carlini, Keynote Speaker, Laufer Family Endowed Professor & Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology
“Probing the Extremes: Mapping Anaphase Dynamics and Engineering the Future of Observation”
10:15 – 12:30PM: MORNING SESSION (Presentations by LC Students)
10:15am – Zachary Alseika, PhD student, Simmerling lab, Building a Model for Type 1 Pili Secretion in E. coli
10:30am - Chris Corbo, PhD student, Rizzo lab, Benchmarking Pose Accuracy and Score Ranking for DOCK6, Vina, and AutoDock 4 Including Approved Drugs
10:45am – Evan Denis, PhD student, Coutsias lab, A mathematical model of hydrogen bond formation near nonpolar solutes
11:00am - Aparna Dileep, PhD student, Serebryany lab, Biophysical adaptations for longevity in lens crystallins
11:15 - 11:25: Break
11:30am - Emma Gebauer, PhD student, M Seeliger lab, Shoot First, Ask Later: High Throughput Crystallography Screens Towards the Identification of Novel Inhibitor Fragments
11:45am Chris Helenek, PhD student, Balazsi lab, Towards Low-Noise Control of Gene Downregulation
12:00pm Satyaki Saha, PhD student, Bahar lab, Distinguishing between positive and negative modulators of allostery: Application to Class B1 GPCRs
12:15pm Zahra Wray, PhD student, Nagan lab, Challenges in Making Reliable Lab-Level Code for Worldwide Production Use
12:30 – 1:30PM: GROUP PHOTO & LUNCH (group photo immediately following talks; collection of 1st round of votes)
1:40 – 3:10 PM: AFTERNOON SESSION (Presentations by LC Postdoctoral Fellows & Research Scientists)
1:40pm - Anupam Banerjee, Research scientist, Bahar lab, Rhapsody-2 and Beyond: How Structural Dynamics Determine Mutation Outcomes
1:55pm - Marco Barone, Postdoc, Tonge lab, Dissecting the kinetic architecture of BTK degraders
2:10 pm - Neetika Jaisinghani, Research Scientist, J Seeliger lab,Tracking the composition and transport of the mycobacterial lipoproteome
2:25pm Justin Palermo, Postdoc, Lin lab, Dissecting AMPK Spatial Localization During Drosophila Primordial Germ Cell Migration
2:40pm Darya Stepanenko, postdoc, Kozakov lab, Modeling immunological complexes using physics informed AI methods
2:55pm Mohamed Swailem, Postdoc, Dill lab, RNA–Protein Association at the Origin of Life: Insights from the Central Dogma
3:10pm Ying-Jen Yang, Laufer Jr Fellow, Dill lab,A Principled Framework for Designing Non-EQuilibrium Molecular Machines
3:25 – 3:40 pm Break & Poster Set Up (and 2nd round of votes)
Poster Presentations 3:45 – 5:00 pm (followed by 3rd round of votes)
AWARDS CEREMONY 5:00 – 5:30 PM
Best student talks (2)
Best postdocs/research associate talks (2)
Best poster presenters (2)
Buffet Dinner 5:30-7:00 pm
