Sirui Ning is a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Berkeley Chemical Engineering Department and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences. His key research focuses on theoretical neuroscience and theoretical biological physics. Dr. Ning is also the current president of the Berkeley Postdoctoral Association (BPA).
Before coming to Berkeley, Dr.Ning completed his undergraduate studies at the School of the Gifted Young, USTC, earned a Master’s (Part III Mathematical Tripos) at Cambridge, and a DPhil in Theoretical Physics at Oxford focused on string theory. This interdisciplinary trajectory positions him well to contribute to the field of biophysics. Dr. Ning is deeply interested in understanding neuroscience from a first-principles approach, inspired by concepts from physics, particularly those related to emergence in condensed matter theory. He is fascinated by how large numbers of particles can give rise to new properties in a system, and wonders if a similar principle applies to macroscopic bioelectricity. He wants to understand how electrical signals are transmitted spatially along axons and how they couple with structural and mechanical features of the membrane environment. His goal is to establish a first-principle foundation that links between microscopic ion channel mechanisms with the emergent complexity of macroscopic bioelectricity.
“My goal,” Dr. Ning explains, “is to try to build a bridge between physics and biology, to use the techniques, the method, the insights from physics to understand the experimental phenomenon in biology.”
Dr. Ning is deeply grateful for the UC Berkeley community. He appreciates the warmth, openness and willingness to help at UC Berkeley that is not always easy to come by. “I really appreciate my supervisors’ guidance. Faculty are usually busy, but they reply to my questions and other people in the group's message very quickly. And the office always offers very effective guidance and help.”
Outside of his research, Dr. Ning enjoys reading books and watching movies. More important to him, though, is cultivating the kind of postdoc community that he wishes to be a part of. “I feel that postdocs are the driving force behind the university research, I will say, but they are often some of the most underrepresented on campus.” Moreover, Dr. Ning strives as BPA president to create a welcoming and inclusive environment that represents postdocs from all walks of life. “I just want to support my peers.”