Staff Scientist

Section on Molecular Transport
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH

Personal statement:

I am a biophysicist who studies mechanisms of protein, metabolite, and other large solute transport across cell and organelle membranes. Specifically, I am interested in molecular transport of polymers, engineered proteins, and intrinsically disordered amyloids assisted by native metabolite-transporting pores and by toxin-induced ion channels, such as mitochondrial VDAC, alpha-hemolysin toxin, and bacterial porin MspA. My work contributes to both general understanding of the principles of water-soluble polymers transport in narrow transmembrane pores in biological membranes; and, more specifically, in creating a platform for nano-sized biodetectors able to sense minute amounts of analyte substances such as biomarkers, toxins, and genetic markers.

Biosketch:

Dr. Philip Gurnev is a Staff Scientist at the Section on Molecular Transport. He received his Ph.D. for the study of channel-forming properties of the family of lipopeptide bacterial toxins at the Institute of Cytology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia) in 2003 under the joint supervision of Dr. Ludmila Schagina and Sergey Bezrukov of NIH, and joined the Section on Molecular Transport as a postdoctoral trainee and then as research fellow in 2004-2012. For three years (2012-2015) Dr. Gurnev was a recipient of the NSF EAGER award, and worked as a Research Fellow at the Physics Department of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, in the Laboratory led by Dr. V. Adrian Parsegian, before assuming a position of the Staff Scientist at the NIH.

As of 2017, Dr. Gurnev co-authored 35 peer-reviewed publications, served as a referee for Langmuir, PLoS One, Macromolecules, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Lab on a Chip, ACs Nano etc, and supervised training of many visiting students and lab interns. He collaborates extensively with NIH labs as well as with extramural colleagues, Dr. V. Adrian Parsegian (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Dr. Horia Petrache (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis), Dr. Christopher Stanley (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dr. Jennifer Lee (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute).