Jan Stevens

@janstevens.bsky.social

QCB postdoctoral fellow, UIUC PhD at the Marrink lab, Uni Groningen Whole-cell modelling, Martini 🍸

How do you choose a CV for MD enhenced sampling methods ? Well, this question is not easy to answer. We tried to help the MD community by giving some clues about it in the following review : www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Feedbacks appreciated :)

Collective variable design for biomolecular conformational dynamics

Describing conformational changes in biomolecules using molecular dynamics simulations requires defining an appropriate low-dimensional mathematical d…

sciencedirect.com

After nearly 6 years of work, I’m excited (and honestly relieved) to share our paper in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... D614G reshapes allosteric networks and opening mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 spikes Very happy to finally see it out in the world!!

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

pnas.org

The KULeuven Department of Physics and Astronomy is recruiting a new faculty member as Research Professor in Experimental Biophysics. The candidate is expected to develop and apply innovative experimental techniques to study the structure and behavior of living systems from a physics perspective.

The Quantitative Cell Biology institute (QCB) at UIUC is hosting a summer school on studying living cells, both computationally and experimentally. Participants choose a theme: whole-cell computational modeling (Martini + Lattice Microbes), MINFLUX, or AFM-IR. Registration is free!

A snapshot from a whole-cell Lattice Microbes simulation of the JCVI-syn3A minimal. Credit: Thornburg et al., Cell (2026)

New preprint from our group: MesoMem: A mesoscale membrane model based on an additive potential on arxiv.org/abs/2602.24123. Using an additive potential combining positional and orientational terms, we get a stable and robust membrane model. Great work of PhD student Pietro Sillano.

MesoMem: A mesoscale membrane model based on an additive potential

Bridging the gap between atomistic detail and continuum mechanics is a central challenge in modeling biological membranes, particularly for mesoscopic phenomena spanning large length and time scales. ...

arxiv.org

So pleased this is finally out! Wonderful work by the incredibly talented @ma3ke.bsky.social and @janstevens.bsky.social to generate densely packed systems, even with complex topologies Go to the paper for cool science, stay for the mesmerizing figures 🤩 Read more about it in this thread 👇

Marieke Westendorp@ma3ke.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Our paper about Bentopy is now published in Protein Science! Bentopy makes assembling large-scale MD models accessible and fast. doi.org/10.1002/pro.... @janstevens.bsky.social, @cg-martini.bsky.social

Model of mitochondrial compartments. The assembly of the mitochondrial model based on an experimentally informed membrane structure (white), from an empty structure (left) into a mask representation of the IMS (yellow) and matrix (pink) compartments represented by 3 nm voxels. Structures are packed into their assigned compartments based on the mask. In the last section and the magnified inset, structures are colored by kind: Proteins (green), RNA (dark blue), metabolites (pale blue).

I have a PhD position available in my lab at the University of Freiburg!! If you, or someone you know, might be looking for a position using modeling and simulations to uncover secrets in (glyco-)protein structure/function relationships please take a look at our website! www.kearnslab.org

Beautiful picture looking out of the chemistry building at the University of Freiburg in Freiburg Germany. The old cathedral can be seen in the distance with a backdrop of a blue sky with clouds and distant foothills of the black forrest with fall colors showing through in the trees picture of the Münster at dawn in the Altstadt of Freiburg, Germany, with a still dark sky in the background and moon over the Münster, in the foreground a well-lit flowers stand can be seen preparing for the daily morning market