Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology

QCB researchers make Minecraft worlds for science education about cells

Learning about cells just became a lot more fun, thanks to some QCB researchers who created virtual worlds for Minecraft.

The team - QCB Director Zaida (Zan) Luthey-Schulten, Associate Director Rohit Bhargarva, Prof. Stephen Boppart, graduate students Tianyu Wu and Kevin Tan, and postdocs Seth Kenkel and Zane Thornburg - relied on high-resolution microscopic data to build their cell models.

They focused first on cells of special interest to researchers and to the public: a yeast cell, epithelial cells from both cancerous and healthy breast tissue, and a “minimally viable” bacterial cell, which has been stripped of all genes that are not essential to life. Their work was published in The Biophysicist.

View the Minecraft worlds here.

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APPLICATIONS NOW BEING ACCEPTED!

QCB Summer School in Quantitative Cell Biology

July 21-25, 2025
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Application deadline March 3, 2025.

More information here.

Registration now open! 2025 NSF iPOLS Meeting at Illinois

The 2025 NSF International Physics of Living Systems Annual Meeting (iPOLS) will be held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign July 28–August 1, with a pre-conference activity in Chicago on July 27.

Want to be part of the program? Abstracts accepted through March 3, 2025.

Registration details and more information here.

QCB Hiring Postdocs!

Applications Now Being Accepted!

QCB offers several postdoctoral fellowship opportunities to support outstanding scientists. These fellowships provide a unique opportunity for selected scholars to engage in a two-year interdisciplinary research fellowship while advancing the research of QCB. 

For full consideration, application must be received by April 30, 2025. Applications may be accepted after that date until all positions are filled. See full details here


Advancing knowledge about cells

The NSF Science and Technology Center for Quantitative Cell Biology will create whole-cell models to transform our understanding of how cells function. With cutting-edge imaging and simulation tools, the center will advance the study of healthy and diseased cells; accelerate research into gene expression, metabolism, and division; and share science with communities of all ages through a partnership with the popular computer game Minecraft.

Model and minecraft model of minimal cells
Yeast model

A new paradigm

We're forging a new scientific understanding of the cell that will have implications for human health, photosynthesis, and more.

Learn more about our impact