Alvin Yu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, Irvine.

As a Ruth L. Kirschstein postdoctoral fellow in the Dept. of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, he studied the molecular basis for replication in viruses, including HIV and SARS-CoV-2. In his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, he studied the physical and chemical basis for neural activity in glutamate receptor ion channels. He earned his B.S. in Physics from Caltech. He is a recipient of the K99/R00 grant from the National Institutes of Health.

His research interests include developing and applying multiscale simulations to provide physical insight into living systems. He leads the Computational Biophysics Group, which uses theory and computation to understand biological phenomena that have a direct impact on human health.