Justin Lemkul
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justinlemkulvt.bsky.social
Justin Lemkul
@justinlemkulvt.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Virginia Tech. Comp Chem, CADD, and Drude FF contributor. Opinions my own. Go Hokies!
Excited to share a new update to the Drude polarizable force field - phosphorylated amino acids! A long-term project that took quite a bit of effort. Great work with PhD student Laura Gil Pineda, former undergrad Candace Miller, and @alexmackerell.bsky.social

authors.elsevier.com/a/1m2md1SPTB...
November 6, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Happy to announce our latest article, a tutorial on running Gaussian-accelerated MD simulations in NAMD. Tour de force work by @hmmichel.bsky.social with @mdpoleto.bsky.social that unifies theory and practice in one place!

livecomsjournal.org/index.php/li...
Running Gaussian-accelerated Molecular Dynamics Simulations in NAMD [Article v1.0] | Living Journal of Computational Molecular Science
livecomsjournal.org
July 12, 2025 at 5:37 PM
A powerful statement from courageous staff at the NIH. #standupforscience #academicsky
Breaking news: Staff at the National Institutes of Health have issued a declaration calling on their director to depoliticize the agency and reverse spending cuts.
NIH staff and biomedical community sound alarm about agency politicization, funding slowdown
In test of NIH director’s support of dissent, NIH staff sign Bethesda Declaration urging reversal of grant cuts and freezes
scim.ag
June 9, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
(10/11)

75 years of scientific discovery—now on the chopping block.

Trump’s 2025 budget proposes a 56% cut to the NSF. Over 1,000 grants terminated. 37 divisions abolished. Funding frozen.

This isn’t just reckless—it’s a war on knowledge, a war on progress.
May 10, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Really happy to have this one out in final form! Fun working with @biochem-anne.bsky.social and we had a great editorial experience with Cell Rep Phys Sci (thanks @andrewbissette.bsky.social et al. and the reviewers for their very constructive comments). #compchemsky

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.xc...
Redirecting
dx.doi.org
May 1, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
Published an op-ed for @cnn.com: “Nobel laureate: I owe America my success. Today, its scientific future is in danger.”
A personal reflection on what’s at stake as science funding gets slashed. I’d be grateful if you could amplify both in and beyond the science world.
www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/h...
Nobel laureate: I owe America my success. Today, its scientific future is in danger | CNN
Dr. Ardem Patapoutian says he watches “with deep sadness as the United States’ remarkable scientific enterprise, which took generations of hard work and national investment to build, faces a concerted...
www.cnn.com
April 9, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Great to meet up with Lexin and Ramon from @groupquintana.bsky.social today at #ACSSpring2025. Great work coming from their group and we are excited to work with them!
March 24, 2025 at 10:30 PM
We are heading to #ACSSpring2025!

Laura is at SciMix (Mon 8 PM) and #ACSCOMP posters (Tues 7 PM) presenting on IDPs.

Esmat has a poster (Tues 12 PM) on CADD for T2D drug discovery.
March 22, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
A behemoth effort from @fionachembot.bsky.social in which she does amazing science (showing how VOCs reshape allosteric pathways) while also making the SARS2 spike color palette match her fish Dorry 😍🫠
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
March 13, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
Tomorrow is @standupforscience.bsky.social
find your local protest and attend! It is our right to protest and we need to keep up the fight against this awful administration.

Science is what makes America great. Education is what makes American great.
March 6, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
JUST IN: A federal judge in Massachusetts has extended her nationwide block on Trump administration effort to slash funds for NIH research.
March 5, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Thank you @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social for another excellent meeting. Had a blast in LA, now back to snowy VA. Until next year…
February 19, 2025 at 3:41 AM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
@biophysicalsoc.bsky.social you need to be sharing at the conference this week like our lives depend on it. Because they do.

Speak up. Stand up. Get out there and protect out democracy
Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025!

Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide!

#scienceforall #sciencenotsilence
February 18, 2025 at 3:00 AM
The Lemkul Lab is heading to #BPS2025! We will have several posters and presentations, so please come chat with us about the latest in MD simulations of biomolecules, CADD, and the Drude polarizable force field! See you in LA! #compchemsky
February 12, 2025 at 8:16 PM
@biochem-anne.bsky.social and I are looking for a home for a perspective we wrote on current technical challenges in biomolecular simulations. Preprint linked here; we aren't sure of the best venue. Shopped around a bit, so far rejected each time for "poor fit." #compchem

doi.org/10.26434/che...
Robustness in Biomolecular Simulations: Addressing Challenges in Data Generation, Analysis, and Curation
Computational simulations of biomolecules provide a wealth of information about the thermodynamic landscape of biologically important systems, kinetics of important cellular processes, and the biophys...
doi.org
January 23, 2025 at 1:26 PM
We have a new #tutorial posted online, this time for Gaussian-accelerated MD as implemented in NAMD. Article has been submitted to LiveCoMS, a great venue for such efforts. We welcome feedback! Yes, it's alanine dipeptide, but you have to start somewhere :) #compchem

github.com/Lemkul-Lab/g...
GitHub - Lemkul-Lab/gamd_livecoms_tutorial
Contribute to Lemkul-Lab/gamd_livecoms_tutorial development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
January 21, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
Excited to finally share that our work is featured as the front cover of ACS Macromolecules' new issue!

Image was powered by the one and only MolecularNodes (thx @bradyajohnston.bsky.social) while I was playing around with surface transparency 😁

#chemsky #compchem
January 14, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Saddened to learn today of Martin Karplus’ passing over the weekend. He was an absolute luminary and founding force in computational chemistry and biophysics. His influence will be felt for many generations of scientists. May he rest in peace.

#chemsky #compchemsky
December 31, 2024 at 11:38 PM
Congratulations to Bekah Fogarty for successfully defending her MS thesis this week! #compchemsky
December 6, 2024 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
"If we don't feel stupid it means we are not really trying"
Very encouraging quote from this inspiring article. The other two are also excellent!

I'll add this piece of advice, which a friendly ultramarathoner once gave me:
"Enjoy the highs, manage the lows!"

#econsky
Three must read papers for PhD students. #scisky #PhD #science #research #academicsky

1. The importance of stupidity in scientific research

Open Access
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
November 26, 2024 at 2:04 AM
Optimist: The cup is half full
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
MD simulator: Is the cup converged?
November 23, 2024 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
🚨Announcing NetSci: a super fast tool to compute correlated motion in biomolecules

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

@pabloarantes.bsky.social & team also made it into a Colab notebook:
colab.research.google.com/drive/1GGJKr...

Give it a try & send feedback!
NetSci: A Library for High Performance Biomolecular Simulation Network Analysis Computation
We present the NetSci program–an open-source scientific software package designed for estimating mutual information (MI) between data sets using GPU acceleration and a k-nearest-neighbor algorithm. This approach significantly enhances calculation speed, achieving improvements of several orders of magnitude over traditional CPU-based methods, with data set size limits dictated only by available hardware. To validate NetSci, we accurately compute MI for an analytically verifiable two-dimensional Gaussian distribution and replicate the generalized correlation (GC) analysis previously conducted on the B1 domain of protein G. We also apply NetSci to molecular dynamics simulations of the Sarcoendoplasmic Reticulum Calcium-ATPase (SERCA) pump, exploring the allosteric mechanisms and pathways influenced by ATP and 2′-deoxy-ATP (dATP) binding. Our analysis reveals distinct allosteric effects induced by ATP compared to dATP, with predicted information pathways from the bound nucleotide to the calcium-binding domain differing based on the nucleotide involved. NetSci proves to be a valuable tool for estimating MI and GC in various data sets and is particularly effective for analyzing intraprotein communication and information transfer.
pubs.acs.org
November 18, 2024 at 6:49 PM
Come be my colleague (pt. 3, yes it's true)! Another non-TT instructional faculty position in our brand new Discovery Space! An amazing opportunity for hands-on, experiential learning with undergrads.

#chemsky #academicsky @chemjobber.bsky.social

careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us...
Details | Collegiate Assistant Professor - Discovery Space | Careers | Division of Human Resources | Virginia Tech
careers.pageuppeople.com
November 13, 2024 at 1:57 AM
Reposted by Justin Lemkul
Our paper found a permanent home at ACS Macromolecules 🎉

Very happy with the final results 😁 #chemsky #compchem

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
November 8, 2024 at 12:28 PM
Come be my colleague (pt. 2)! We have an opening for a Collegiate Assistant Professor (non-tenure track instructional faculty) to teach and innovate in our senior-level laboratory class. Join us!

#chemsky #academicsky

careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us...
Details | Collegiate Assistant Professor | Careers | Division of Human Resources | Virginia Tech
careers.pageuppeople.com
November 13, 2024 at 1:57 AM