Title: "Modeling the Genome: A View by a Physicist,”

José N. Onuchic

Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Chair of Physics
Professor of Chemistry and BioSciences

Rice University

Host: Davit Potoyan

Bio: José Nelson Onuchic is a Brazilian-American physicist and the Harry C. & Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics at Rice University. He specializes in molecular biophysics, condensed matter chemistry, and genetic networks, and is known for the folding funnel hypothesis, which posits that a protein’s native state is a deep free‑energy minimum among its configurations. His honors include the Beckman Young Investigators Award (1992), fellowships in the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

Onuchic has led the biological physics community in developing integrated, multiscale models spanning molecular interactions, cellular systems, and multicellular structures, with increasing emphasis on medical applications, particularly cancer, at Rice. Building on energy‑landscape theory, his group investigates mechanisms of protein folding and function; advances theoretical descriptions of chemical reactions in condensed media with a focus on biological electron transfer; studies stochastic effects in gene networks linked to bacterial decision‑making and cancer; and explores chromatin folding and function.