Dongping Zhong, the Robert Smith Professor of Physics, and professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is one of an elite group of the nation’s top researchers just awarded a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

This new award is designed to boost the progress of well-established researchers. Zhong’s five-year grant of $2,143,295 begins July 1. 

The studies in Zhong’s research group have important implications for drug transport and design, protein folding and unfolding, and enzyme catalysis. 

“An added bonus of this award,” Zhong said, “is that the MIRA funding will allow my research group to focus on new frontiers without too much restriction.”     

Zhong’s research is critical to understanding the nature of elementary processes in biological systems, relating dynamics and structures to functions at the most fundamental level.

His lab uses state-of-the-art femtosecond lasers and the tools of molecular biology to study both molecular recognition and ultrafast protein dynamics of several important biological systems. These include DNA-repair enzymes and photosensory proteins key to the synchronization of biological timing (circadian rhythm).

Zhong is a member of Ohio State’s Biophysics Program, Chemical Physics Program, Biochemistry Program and Spectroscopy Institute.