text: Zaida Ann "Zan" Luthey-Schulten is the William and Janet Lycan Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was promoted to professor in 2004. She is also involved with the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
  Luthey-Schulten develops molecular dynamics simulations, focusing on individual molecules and groups of molecules and the cellular processes occurring within them. Models are verified and improved through comparison to experimental data from independent researchers. In 2011, her group simulated the cellular architecture of an entire cell and its surrounding cytoplasm, the first time that such an extensive and complex cellular system had been modeled.  The three-dimensional model combined ribosome data and other descriptors of Escherichia coli. Representing the architectural features of the interior of the cell suggested that crowding might significantly affect reactions that occur within the cells. More recent work has focused on the modelling of a methane-producing archaean.