Dr. Megan C. Engel

Prior to being recruited as an Assistant Professor of Biophysics in the Biological Sciences Department at the University of Calgary in February 2023, Dr. Engel held a Schmidt Science Fellowship in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. She received her DPhil in Theoretical Physics from Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship in August 2018 after completing an MSc in Physics at the University of Alberta. Dr Engel’s graduate work in Oxford (for which she won the Springer Theses Prize for outstanding, high impact PhD research) explored the relationship between de novo molecular design and function through coarse-grained simulations of DNA nanotechnology with the oxDNA model. During her fellowship at Harvard, Dr Engel partnered with scientists at Google Research to learn about advanced ML techniques, studying optimal non-equilibrium processes with automatic differentiation. Dr. Engel has extensive experience with international collaborations across academia and industry.