About

Shabnam Akhtari is a professor at the Pennsylvania State University, based in the McAllister Building. Her research interests include Number Theory, Geometry of Numbers, and Diophantine Analysis. Her work focuses on these areas, contributing to the understanding of their underlying mathematical structures and properties.

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Organic chemistry
• Computational biology
• Materials science
• Biology
• Polymer chemistry
• Biochemistry
• Biophysics
• Inorganic chemistry
• Cell biology
• Nanotechnology

Selected publications

• Weakly hydrated anions bind to polymers but not monomers in aqueous solutions

  Nature Chemistry · 2021 · 115 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Chemistry
  • Polymer chemistry
  • Organic chemistry
  DOI

• Molecular Mechanism for the Interactions of Hofmeister Cations with Macromolecules in Aqueous Solution

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2020 · 90 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Chemistry
  • Inorganic chemistry
  • Organic chemistry

  -isopropylacrylamide), a thermoresponsive polymer with an amide moiety on its side chain, was studied in aqueous solutions with a series of nine different cation chloride salts as a function of salt concentration. Phase transition temperature measurements were correlated to molecular dynamics simulations. The results showed that although all cations were on average depleted from the macromolecule/water interface, more strongly hydrated cations were able to locally accumulate around the amide oxygen. These weakly favorable interactions helped to partially offset the salting-out effect. Moreover, the cations approached the interface together with chloride counterions in solvent-shared ion pairs. Because ion pairing was concentration-dependent, the mitigation of the dominant salting-out effect became greater as the salt concentration was increased. Weakly hydrated cations showed less propensity for ion pairing and weaker affinity for the amide oxygen. As such, there was substantially less mitigation of the net salting-out effect for these ions, even at high salt concentrations.

  DOI

• De novo engineering of intracellular condensates using artificial disordered proteins

  Nature Chemistry · 2020 · 308 citations

  • Chemistry
  • Biophysics
  • Nanotechnology
  DOI

Recent grants

• Probing Protein-Salt Interactions with Microfluidics and Nonlinear Optics

  NSF · $416k · 2008–2011

• NIH Grant R01GM070622

  NIH · $2.2M · 2013

• INFEWS: N/P/H20: From Antinutrients to Water Pollutants: Exploring the Behavior of Polyphosphate Anions in Aqueous Solutions

  NSF · $497k · 2017–2020

• Hydrophobic and Electrostatic Driving Forces for Ion Adsorption to Polymers and Extended Interfaces

  NSF · $500k · 2020–2023

• Investigating the Interactions of Ions with Polypeptides

  NSF · $475k · 2014–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Tinglu Yang

  Pennsylvania State University

  78 shared

• Raffi V. Aroian

  University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School

  25 shared

• Stuart M. Haslam

  Imperial College London

  25 shared

• Joel S. Griffitts

  Brigham Young University

  25 shared

• Stephan F. Garczynski

  University of California, San Diego

  25 shared

• Michael J. Adang

  University of Georgia

  25 shared

• Anne Dell

  Imperial College London

  25 shared

• Halil İ. Okur

  Bilkent University

  22 shared

Labs

• Cremer GroupPI

Awards & honors

• Langmuir Lecture Award, American Chemical Society (2017)
• Distinguished Lecturer, Hong Kong Baptist University (2017)
• ANACHEM Award (2016)
• Pittcon Lecturer, University of Akron (2016)
• J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Natural Sciences, Penn State (2013)

Similar researchers at Pennsylvania State University

• Long-Qing Chenh-150
• Qin Wangh-123
• Richard Alleyh-120
• William H. Bruneh-99
• Ayusman Senh-96