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Demmelash Mengistu

Graduate Research Assistant

Department of Materials Science and  Engineering

Demmelash Mengistu

Demmelash received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. In Fall 2010 he joined the Nanophotonics research group as a graduate research assistant. Prior to joining the Nanophotonics research group, he was  a graduate student at North Dakota State University, USA. At North Dakota State University, he was doing research on the areas of Computational Biophysics. Currently Demmelash is working on nano-scale photonic devices. He uses finite element numerical methods to model and investigate opto-electrical properties of surface plasmon of metallic nanoparticles.

Publications

Journal Publications

  • Demmelash H Mengistu, Edgar E Kooijman, and Sylvio May, “Ionization Properties of Mixed Lipid Membranes: A Gouy-Chapman Model of the Electrostatic-Hydrogen Bond Switch”,  BBA Biomembranes 1808, 1985-1992 (2011)
  • Demmelash H. Mengistu, Klemen Bohinc, and Sylvio May , “A model for the electrostatic contribution to the pH-dependent nonideal mixing of a binary charged-zwitterionic lipid bilayer”, Biophys. Chem., 150, 112-118 (2010)
  • Demmelash H. Mengistu, Klemen Bohinc, and Sylvio May , “Poisson-Boltzmann model in a solvent of interacting Langevin dipoles”, EPL (88), 14003 (2009)
  • Demmelash H. Mengistu, Klemen Bohinc, and Sylvio May , “Binding of DNA to Zwitterionic Lipid Layers mediated by Divalent Cations”, J. Phys. Chem. B., 113 (36), 12277-12282 (2009)
  • Demmelash H. Mengistu and Sylvio May, “Nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann model of charged lipid membranes: Accounting for the presence of zwitterionic lipids”, J. Chem. Phys. 129, 121105 (2008)
  • Demmelash H. Mengistu and Sylvio May, “Debye-Huckel theory of mixed charged-zwitterionic lipid layers”, Eur. Phys. J. E, 26, 251-260 (2008)

Conference and Poster Presentations

  • Biophysical Society 52nd Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2008, Long Beach, CA: ” Demmelash H. Mengistu and Sylvio May, Modeling Calcium Induced Adsorption of DNA onto Zwitterionic Lipid Membranes”
  • Americal Physical Society, March 16-20, 2009, Pittsburgh, PA (attended)