{"id":124,"date":"2018-02-06T12:38:54","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T17:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/?page_id=124"},"modified":"2026-01-27T21:22:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T02:22:56","slug":"graduate","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/people\/graduate\/","title":{"rendered":"Current Graduate Students"},"content":{"rendered":"<div  style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 300px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/cui-group\/files\/2023\/06\/Sangram_photo2-636x591.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"><\/td>\n<td>\n<p><B>Sangram Prusty<\/B><\/p>\n<p>Chemistry student (2022-present)<\/p>\n<p>Sangram received his BS-MS dual degree, majoring in Chemical Sciences with a minor in Biological Sciences from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata (IISERK), India. Currently, he is a joint graduate student with Prof. Cui and Prof. Straub&#8217;s group. His research in the QC group involves comparative studies of polarizable and non-polarizable force fields in describing protein dynamics. Additionally, Sangram plans to develop a string-based methodology to investigate membrane pore formation during protein aggregation. In Straub&#8217;s group, he investigates protein partitioning into lipid phases using non-equilibrium approaches like generalized Langevin equations. In his free time, Sangram enjoys playing music and cooking.\n<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 300px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/cui-group\/files\/2024\/03\/20240131_203053-477x636.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"><\/td>\n<td>\n<p><B>Kevin Tang <\/B><\/p>\n<p>Chemistry student (2023-present)<\/p>\n<p>\nKevin received his B.S. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Chemistry and Computer Science. He did his undergraduate research in the Yethiraj Group on using machine learning methods to predict the phase separation of Lennard-Jones fluid. His current research focuses on understanding the hydrophobicity of nano-silica materials with different headgroups and the interaction between polymers and lipid membranes.\n<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 300px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/cui-group\/files\/2024\/03\/IMG_20231225_210131-358x636.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"><\/td>\n<td>\n<p><B>Anand Sahu <\/B><\/p>\n<p>Chemistry student (2023-present)<\/p>\n<p>\nAnand received his B.S. degree from Hindu College, University of Delhi, India, and his M.S. degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He conducted his master&#8217;s research on the synthesis of ultra-electron-deficient systems and the application of deep learning in predicting the electronic and physicochemical properties of such systems under the guidance of Dr. Pritam Mukhopadhyay. Additionally, he contributed to scientific software development in Dr. Varadharajan Srinivasan&#8217;s lab. His current research involves the development of semi-empirical quantum mechanical methods to study non-covalent and metal-ligand interactions for chemical and biochemical applications.\n<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 300px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/cui-group\/files\/2025\/07\/Allen_Jonathan-636x509.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"><\/td>\n<td>\n<p><B>Jonathan Allen <\/B><\/p>\n<p>Chemistry student (2023-present)<\/p>\n<p>\nJonathan received his BS in Chemistry from the University of Texas at San Antonio. His undergraduate research in Dr. Doug Frantz&#8217;s lab focused on organometallic catalysis. His current research spans quantum mechanics\/molecular mechanics (QM\/MM), biomolecular simulation, and the development of next-generation quantum chemical methods integrating machine learning with massively parallel computing techniques.\n<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 300px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/cui-group\/files\/2025\/02\/photo-492x636.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-685\" \/><\/td>\n<td>\n<p><B>Pridhi Balhara <\/B><\/p>\n<p>Chemistry student (2024-present)<\/p>\n<p>\nPridhi completed her BSc degree at St. Stephen\u2019s College, University of Delhi, and a master\u2019s degree in Theoretical Chemistry through the Erasmus Mundus European Union program. For her master\u2019s thesis, she conducted research in computational glycobiology under the supervision of Dr. Carme Rovira. She is currently a joint PhD student in the Straub Lab and the Cui Group. Her research interests focus on studying protein-lipid interactions using atomistic and coarse-grained methods.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 300px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/cui-group\/files\/2026\/01\/renjie.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-751\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/files\/2026\/01\/renjie.jpg 161w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/files\/2026\/01\/renjie-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/td>\n<td>\n<p><B>Renjie Zhu <\/B><\/p>\n<p>Chemistry student (2025-present)<\/p>\n<p>\nRenjie received his BSc in Chemistry from East China Normal University. He conducted undergraduate research in Fei Xia\u2019s group at the NYU\u2013ECNU Center for Computational Chemistry, focusing on the development of coarse grained (CG) parameters and models. His current research centers on using computational approaches to uncover allosteric behaviors in protein complexes and gain deeper mechanistic insight into biological processes.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 300px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/cui-group\/files\/2026\/01\/haowen.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-750\" \/><\/td>\n<td>\n<p><B>Haowen Qian <\/B><\/p>\n<p>Chemistry student (2025-present)<\/p>\n<p>\nHaowen received his B.S. degree from Fudan University, China. During his studies in Professor Xin Xu\u2019s group, he conducted research on machine learning force fields for water clusters and the Extended ONIOM (XO) method. Currently, his work focuses on using machine learning to reparameterize semi-empirical quantum methods applied to metal complexes.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sangram Prusty Chemistry student (2022-present) Sangram received his BS-MS dual degree, majoring in Chemical Sciences with a minor in Biological Sciences from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata (IISERK), India. Currently, he is a joint graduate student with Prof. Cui and Prof. Straub&#8217;s group. His research in the QC group involves comparative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10766,"featured_media":0,"parent":97,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10766"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":752,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124\/revisions\/752"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/cui-group\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}