Sujay Ray, Assistant Professor
Dr. Sujay Ray will join the University of Mississippi Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry on August 1st. Dr. Ray received his Bachelor of Science from Calcutta University, India, in 2007, a Masters of Science from Indian Institute of Technology, India, in 2009, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Physics from Kent State University in 2015. He then served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan from 2015-2020 and Harvard University from 2020-2022, and then as a senior research assistant at the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at UM. His interests center around nucleic acid-protein interactions in the context of cellular stress responses, DNA/RNA- nano structures, molecular robotics, single molecule biophysics/biochemistry, fluorescence microscopy, and force spectroscopy.
His research group at the University of Mississippi will study how biological systems work at the nanoscale, focusing on cellular stress response. He will look at how certain structures made of DNA/RNA help cells manage resources and adapt to challenging stress conditions by prioritizing essential functions. He aims to understand how these complex DNA/RNA structures interact with different proteins to manage the demands of the cell. His goal is to clearly link between structural attributes and functional response and ultimately harness these insights for biotechnological innovations and clinical intervention. To accomplish this, he will develop and apply novel single-molecule manipulation and detection techniques, and nanoscale engineering. His research projects will combine approaches from a variety of disciplines including chemistry, physics, molecular biology, and engineering we collaborate with researchers from these various disciplines.