Behzad Mehrafrooz
e-mail: 
behzadm2@illinois.edu
phone: 
(217) 721-1774
office: 
261 LLP, 3039 Beckman Institute

Loomis Laboratory of Physics
1110 West Green Street
Urbana, IL 61801-3080

Behzad Mehrafrooz received his B.S. degree in Mechanical engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Technology in 2014, and his Master's in 2017 from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. He is currently a PhD student in the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology. His research is mainly focused on nanopore-based protein sequencing using solid-state and biological nanopores. 

Google Scholar Profile

 

Awards

● Winner of the 2023 Biophysical Society The Art of Science Image Contest

● Judges' Select Award for the best talk, 2nd Annual Biophysics Student Symposium, UIC, Chicago, 2023

● Judges' Select Award for the best poster presentation from the Illinois Biophysics, UIUC, 2023

● NIH travel grant, Nanopore Sequencing: From Genomes To Proteomes, 2022, Northeastern University, Boston MA.

 

Journal covers

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Publications

  1. Prabhat Tripathi, Abdelkrim Benabbas, Behzad Mehrafrooz, Hirohito Yamazaki, Aleksei Aksimentiev, Paul M. Champion, and Meni Wanunu. "Electrical unfolding of cytochrome during translocation through a nanopore constriction." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118:e2016262118 (2021). PDF icon si_published.pdf (5.09 MB)
  2. Luning Yu, Xinqi Kang, Fanjun Li, Behzad Mehrafrooz, Amr Makhamreh, Ali Fallahi, Joshua C. Foster, Aleksei Aksimentiev, Min Chen, and Meni Wanunu. "Unidirectional single-file transport of full-length proteins through a nanopore." Nature Biotechnology 41:1130-1139 (2023).
  3. Prabhat Tripathi, Behzad Mehrafrooz, Aleksei Aksimentiev, Sophie E. Jackson, Martin Gruebele, and Meni Wanunu. "A Marcus-Type Inverted Region in the Translocation Kinetics of a Knotted Protein." The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 14:10719-10726 (2023).
  4. Hyeonji Oh, Yu-Ming Tu, Laximicharan Samineni, Sophie De Respino, Behzad Mehrafrooz, Himanshu Joshi, Lynnicia Massenburg, Horacio Lopez-Marques, Nada Elessawy, Woochul Song, Harekrushna Behera, Raman Dhiman, Veda Sheersh Boorla, Kartik Kher, Yi-Chih Lin, Costas Maranas, Aleksei Aksimentiev, Benny D. Freeman, and Manish Kumar. "Dehydrated Biomimetic Membranes with Skinlike Structure and Function." ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 16:20865-20877 (2024).
  5. Behzad Mehrafrooz, Luning Yu, Laxmi Pandey, Zuzanna S. Siwy, Meni Wanunu, and Aleksei Aksimentiev. "Electro-Osmotic Flow Generation via a Sticky Ion Action." ACS nano 18:17521-17533 (2024).
  6. Saman Fatima, Behzad Mehrafrooz, David G. Boggs, Noor Ali, Swapnil Singh, Megan C. Thielges, Jennifer Bridwell-Rabb, Aleksei Aksimentiev, and Lisa Olshansky. "Conformation-Dependent Hydrogen-Bonding Interactions in a Switchable Artificial Metalloprotein." Biochemistry (2024).