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Sie sind hier: FRIAS School of Soft Matter … Fellows Joseph Klafter

Joseph Klafter

External Senior Fellow
February 2009 - January 2011

School of Chemistry
University of Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Israel

Tel. +972-3-6408254
Fax +972-3-6406466

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Joseph Klafter is Heinemann Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Tel Aviv University, Israel. He studied physics at the Bar Ilan University where he received his Bachelor of Science   and Master of Sciences, the latter in 1969. He obtained his doctorate at the Tel Aviv University in 1978. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow for two years in the chemistry department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1980 to 1987 he worked at the Exxon Research and Engineering Company. He returned to the Tel Aviv University in 1987 and became chair professor of chemistry in 1998. In 2008 he became a fellow of the School of Soft Matter Research at the newly founded institute, FRIAS, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. Klafter was a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1993) and Head of Exact Sciences and Technology section of the Israel Science Foundation (1996-2002). Since 2001 he has been a representative at the European Science Foundation, PESC committee, as well as Chairman of the Academic Board of the Israel Science Foundation, ISF since 2002. Joseph Klafter has been distinguished by several awards, both nationally and internationally. In 1996 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Prize. He received the Weizmann Prize for Sciences in 1999,  the Kolthoff award of the Technion in 2003, the Rothschild Prize in Chemistry, 2004, and the Israel Chemical Society Prize of 2005.

 

FRIAS Project

Manipulating molecules one by one

Single-molecule spectroscopy at room temperature has become an established approach which can report on distributions of various properties of individual molecules (i.e., reactivities, conformational changes, diffusion, unfolding rates, etc.) on a wide spectrum of scales. The information obtained from single-molecule spectroscopy could be valuable in particular for biomolecules where rare events, which could be missed in an ensemble approach, might have functional significance. In particular, living cells provide striking examples for systems where subdiffusion has been repeatedly observed experimentally on a single molecule level. However, the microscopic origin of subdiffusion in cells is still being debated. Here we propose a program that will focus on: (i) manipulation of proteins on a single molecule level, (ii) dynamics of proteins in membranes/cellular systems and their relation to biological functions and (iii) crowding effects in cells.

 

Selected Publications

  1. A. Lubelski, M. Sokolov and J. Klafter: Nonergodicity mimics inhomogeneity in single particle tracking. Physical Review Letters, PRL 100, 25, 250602 (2008)
  2. S. Reuveni, R. Granek and J. Klafter: Proteins: Coexistance of Stability and Flexibility. Physical Review Letters, PRL 100, 208101(4) (2008)
  3. S. Condamin, O. Benichou, V. Tejedor, R. Voituriez and J. Klafter: First-Passage times in complex scale-invariant media.Nature 450, 77-80 (2007)
  4. M. Urbakh, J. Klafter, D. Gourdon and J. Israelachvili: The Nonlinear Nature of Friction. Nature 430, 525-528 (2004)
  5. I. Sokolov, J. Klafter and A. Blumen: Fractional Kinetics. Physics Today 55, 48-54 (2002)
  6. J. Klafter, M.F. Shlesinger and G. Zumofen: Beyond Brownian Motion. Physics Today 49, 33-39 (1996)
  7. M. F. Shlesinger, G. M. Zaslavsky and J. Klafter: Strange Kinetics. Nature 363, 31-37 (1993)