With increasing demands for inquiry-competent problem-solvers and emerging evidence that active problem-solving promotes a deeper understanding of science (1-3), universities are facing a need to rethink teaching styles to promote students as active contributors to exploring and solving scientific problems (4, 5). One way is through integrating research in teaching. This method involves a dynamic process of realization for both the student and the researcher and is centered around a scientific area of interest to both (6). In a course on intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) (7), we explored how teaching and research can be integrated in ways that not only confer deep learning (8) and research-related skills, but also create new scientific insights.IDPs are a group of recently discovered proteins. Unlike other proteins, the function of IDPs is not tied to a three-dimensional form. Instead, they exist as dynamic ensembles of disordered structures relevant to their function. The disordered dynamics and discord of function from a specific shape challenges a .60-yr-old paradigm (9) that has shaped the established scientific knowledge on what proteins look like and how they function (10-12) (Fig 1a). IDPs are not an oddity but make up 30-40% of the human genome (13) with key roles in health and disease (14). They are subject to an emerging interest, not only in basic research (15,16), but also from industries, having an interest in their roles in diseases and cures and in using them as novel biomaterials. The limited knowledge and potential for important

We present linear optical absorptions of photo/thermochromic molecules interacting with a gold nanoparticle. The photo/thermochromic system is the dihydroazulene/vinylheptafulvene (DHA/VHF) system and our aim is to study the effects of the interaction between the gold nanoparticle and the molecular systems. We consider the changes of the one-photon excitations of the dihydroazulene/vinylheptafulvene system as we increase the interactions between the molecules and the nanoparticle by decreasing the distance between them. We utilize a quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical method for investigating the photo/thermochromic molecular system interacting with the gold nanoparticle. The photo/thermochromic molecules are described quantum mechanically using density functional theory whereas the gold nanoparticle is represented as gold atoms with atomic polarizabillities using molecular mechanics. We observed that the optical properties of the photo/thermochromic systems are affected by the presence of the nanoparticle and the changes depend strongly on the conformer of the molecular system along with the relative orientation and distance between the photo/thermochromic molecules and the nanoparticle.