Education

Ronen obtained his B.Sc. in chemistry (concentrating on organic synthesis) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1995.
He then moved to the University of Chicago to work on his Ph.D with Stuart A. Rice (1999).

In his thesis, he studied computationally phase transitions of colloidal suspensions in confined geometries.

Later, he moved to the Molecular Dynamics Group at the University of Groningen and there he was introduced to biomolecular simulations.
In 2004, he moved to New York to work on his second postdoctoral research at Columbia University where he investigated hydrophobic interactions.
In 2008, he was appointed as an Ikerbasque Research Professor.

Honors and awards

Kent Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Studies (Graduated Summa Cum Laude) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1994.

Marie Curie Individual Fellowships 2000-2001 and Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant 2010-2014.

Research

Molecular dynamics simulations, at the all-atom level as well as coarse-grained descriptions, are utilized to understand and predict problems in various fields.
Research areas being investigated include different aspects of hydrophobic interactions, electrolyte solutions, behavior of surfactants at the surface of polymer particles, molecules in confined geometries, protein and peptide folding, DNA-protein recognition, and ligand receptor interactions.

In addition, methods for classical simulations are aimed to be developed.
In this case, we focus on improving prediction of protein-ligand binding mode and affinity by the replica-exchange approach and on calculating proton-transfer equilibria.

Theory and Simulations Group

Publications