Condensed Matter Seminar: Mathematical and Computational Foundations of Single-Particle Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Recent advances in hardware and computational methods have transformed cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) into a powerful tool for elucidating molecular structures at near-atomic resolution. This talk will explore the computational challenges inherent in 3D structure reconstruction from cryo-EM data, including extreme noise, missing data, and the scale of modern datasets. I will highlight key algorithmic strategies developed to address these issues and, time permitting, share a recent research effort focused on the recovery of small molecular structures---an especially difficult problem that remains unsolved with current technology.