Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Education:
B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Bombay, 1992
Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware, 1997

Career Highlights:
Garde was a Los Alamos National Laboratory Director's Fellow from 1997 to 1999 and received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2002. He is using the five-year, $374,965 grant to develop computer simulation tools for understanding and modeling how biological molecules self-assemble in water-based solutions.

Research Areas:
Garde’s research interests include molecular thermodynamics and simulations of biological systems, statistical mechanics of liquids and polymers, and solvation phenomena, especially in aqueous solutions (such as water structure and hydrophobic interactions). His research focuses on understanding and modeling the role of water structure in inducing interactions between various hydrophobic, polar, and ionic molecules, which ultimately lead to many important self-assembly processes in water.

Selected Publications:
A. Kalra, G. Hummer, and S. Garde, "Selective Partitioning of Methanes into Hydrated Carbon Nanotubes," submitted to Physical Review Letters, (2002).

S. Garde, G. Hummer, and R. Khare, "Effect of Chain Length on Microscopic Density Fluctuations and Solvation in Polymeric Fluids," Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering, 85, 449 (2001).

T. Ghosh, A.E. Garcia, and S. Garde, "Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Pressure Effects on Hydrophobic Interactions," Journal of American Chemical Society, 123, 10997-11003 (2001).

A. Kalra, N. Tugcu, S. Cramer, and S. Garde, "Salting-in and Salting-out of Hydrophobic Solutes in Aqueous Salt Solutions," Journal of Physical Chemistry B., 105, 6380-6386 (2001).

G. Hummer, A.E. García, and S. Garde, "Helix Nucleation Kinetics Using Molecular Simulations in Explicit Solvent," Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics, 42, 77-84 (2001).

G. Hummer, A.E. García, and S. Garde, "Conformational Diffusion and Helix Formation Kinetics," Physical Review Letters, 85, 2637-2640 (2000).

G. Hummer and S. Garde, ”Cavity Expulsion and Weak Dewetting of Hydrophobic Solutes in Water,'' Physical Review Letters, 80, 4193-4196 (1998).

G. Hummer, S. Garde, A.E. García, M.E. Paulaitis, and L.R. Pratt, “The Pressure Dependence of Hydrophobic Interactions is Consistent with the Observed Pressure Denaturation of Proteins,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 95, 1552-1555 (1998).

S. Garde, G. Hummer, A.E. García, M.E. Paulaitis, and L.R. Pratt, “Origin of the Entropy Convergence in Hydrophobic Hydration and Protein Folding,” Physical Review Letters 77, 4966-4968 (1996).

S. Garde, G. Hummer, A.E. García, L.R. Pratt, and M.E. Paulaitis, “Hydrophobic Hydration: Inhomogeneous Water Structure Near Nonpolar Molecular Solutes,” Physical Review E, 53, R4310-4313, (1996).

Contact Information:
Shekhar Garde
(518) 276-6048
gardes@rpi.edu
http://www.rpi.edu/~gardes/