Nicolas Moreno Chaparro

Dr Moreno’s main research focuses on the particle-based multiscale simulation of synthetic and biological soft-matter, such as hierarchical assembly block copolymer and proteins, and the flow of colloidal and cellular systems. The research of Dr Moreno is motivated by the lack of understanding of the thermodynamic and kinetic interplay at different Spatio-temporal scales, in both synthetic and biological systems.

His three main research topics are i) the self-assembly and thermodynamic similarities between biological and synthetic molecules, ii) the multiscale modelling of biological systems (proteins, organelles, viruses, and cells), and iii) consistent coarse-graining methodologies for particle-based models. Dr Moreno’s research is driven by a workflow involving theoretical/computational/experimental interdisciplinary interactions. His goal is to provide reliable computational models to gain insights into hierarchical pathways of assembly and provide experimentalist tools to design better methodologies/materials.

To gain insight into the mucoadhesion phenomena involved in drug delivery processes, he modelled the aggregation of the glycoprotein mucin and their adsorption on polymeric surfaces. Dr Moreno proposed a simple mucin model that was able to capture the aggregation kinetics characteristic of these types of proteins. In the field of synthetic polymers, he studied the self-assembly of block copolymers in selective solvents to understand the effect of polymer conformation on the morphology of membranes at the macroscopic scale. The findings from this research served as a guide to introducing novel polymer/solvent formulations and processing conditions that allowed experimentalists to move from membranes with pores of 60nm to 5nm.

Currently, he is working in the multiscale modelling of thrombotic processes related to SARS-CoV-2. Dr Moreno has also investigated the role of hydrodynamic interactions in the transport of viruses. In this work, the interplay between shape and affinity of the spike proteins decorating enveloped virus was investigated numerically.