Bio
Dr. Luoxi Tan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where he conducts experimental and computational research on soft materials, including biomembranes, lipid nanoparticles, surfactants, and other water-rich systems. His research has advanced methods for modeling lipid-membrane structure, identified co-solvent-induced changes in lateral membrane organization as a form of membrane stress, and contributed to the theoretical and experimental understanding of solvent-induced membrane failure in microbial systems.
Dr. Tan earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, where his doctoral research focused on amphiphilic co-solvent partitioning in biomembranes. At ORNL, his research combines small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), molecular dynamics simulations, and scattering-model development to study microbial membrane solvent tolerance, deuterated detergent micelles, immobilized protein–resin systems, and mRNA-loaded lipid nanoparticles.
His research experience also includes LC–MS and GC–MS lipidomics, NMR spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic light scattering, fluorescence microscopy, FTIR spectroscopy, and neutron- and X-ray-scattering techniques. He develops Python-based models and automated workflows for small-angle scattering analysis and performs molecular dynamics simulations of soft materials using GROMACS.