Konrad Meister
Boise State University, ID·Biophysics·Early-career
Pure water does not freeze at 0 °C. Forming the first tiny ice crystal costs energy, so clean water can stay liquid far below freezing.
- Fields
Biophysics
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
ice nucleation
ice-nucleating proteins
antifreeze proteins
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Determine how the most potent bacterial ice-nucleating proteins trigger ice formation, resolving the molecular structures and interfacial interactions that allow freezing close to 0 °C.
- Test how the assembly of individual ice-binding units into larger functional domains correlates with ice-nucleating ability, linking aggregation state to nucleation temperature.
- Build biomimetic ice-control materials using ice-binding proteins as building blocks, aiming for systems that switch between antifreeze and ice-nucleating behavior depending on assembly.
- Derive general structure–function relationships for biogenic ice nucleators that can inform cryopreservation, de-icing and cloud-ice representation in climate models.
More about the research
In nature, freezing almost always needs help from a particle that acts as a template, and the best templates known are not minerals or synthetic materials but proteins made by bacteria. These ice-nucleating proteins can start ice formation at temperatures just below 0 °C, which affects frost damage on crops, rainfall, snowpack, and the behavior of clouds. Despite how much depends on them, their structures and the way they work are still largely unknown.
Why it matters
Control over when and how water freezes matters for cryopreservation of cells and tissues, for de-icing methods that avoid harmful chemicals, and for climate and weather models that depend on how clouds form ice. Farmers facing frost damage, communities in cold and Arctic regions where ice is both a hazard and a resource, and modelers predicting rainfall could all benefit from knowing how biological ice nucleators work and from tunable materials built on the same principles.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tendai Gadzikwa
Kansas State University, KS·Chemistry·Early-career
Determine the molecular origins of unexpected reactivity observed within and on multifunctional metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), porous crystals with several chemical groups placed close together, using machine learning.
James Canary
New York University, NY·Chemistry
Develop mathematical and computational tools that distinguish molecules by their three-dimensional shape and structure, and use them to predict and constrain which topologies DNA motifs can adopt.
Debarshi Roy
Alcorn State University, MS·Biomedical Engineering
Engineer the protein corona, the layer of body proteins that coats a nanoparticle, on biomimetic materials to control how the particles interact with the immune system.
The school
Boise State University: 10 labs on PI Pages, $58M a year on research, 64 research doctorates a year.
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