Evolution is an Engineer: Life’s Molecular Machines
Over the last century, humans have devised engines that convert chemical energy into motion and work. Evolution has been solving this same engineering problem for billions of years — but at the nanometer scale. Inside every cell, molecular machines (millions of times smaller than a car engine) transform energy with remarkable efficiency, speed, and accuracy. In this talk, I’ll explore how these evolved machines work, the physical challenges imposed by their size and materials, and how statistical physics provides the key to understanding their function.
Short bio
Dr. David Sivak is Professor of Physics at Simon Fraser University, where he is also an associate member of the Chemistry and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry departments. He holds a Tier-II Canada Research Chair in nonequilibrium statistical biophysics and received the Biophysical Society of Canada’s 2021 Young Investigator Award. His winding career path has taken him through degrees in mathematics at Harvard; philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford; and biophysics at UC Berkeley; followed by postdoctoral fellowships in physics and in systems biology in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Sivak research group combines theory, computation, and close experimental collaboration to study the physics of molecular machines, with potential applications in nanotechnology for sustainable energy.