Dear All,
as you might have seen Thomas Renger is visiting MIT on Tues. May 17.
(He is an author of the often-cited Adolphs & Renger 2006 Biophys. J.
paper.)
There will be a student lunch at noon at MIT. In addition, there are
meeting slots for 45 min throughout the day.
I suggest the Aspuru-Guzik group takes the slot at 1:15 pm (alternative:
2 pm) after lunch. His seminar talk is at 3 pm.
To get a head count, please let me know if you would like to attend the
lunch and/or meeting. Also, please let me know if you have a preference
w.r.t. meeting time or the options do not work for you at all.
Thanks,
Patrick
**
*Abstract:* In photosynthesis, light energy absorbed in light-harvesting
pigment-protein complexes is transferred via an exciton mechanism to the
reaction center where it is used to drive electron transfer reactions.
The quantum efficiency of the transfer is close to 100 percent, that is,
almost all excitons created reach the reaction center. In order to
bridge the gap between the crystal structures of these light-harvesting
proteins and optical experiments probing their function, two essential
problems need to be solved. On one hand, theories of optical spectra and
excitation energy transfer have to be developed that take into account
the pigment-pigment (excitonic) and the pigment-protein
(exciton-vibrational) coupling on an equal footing. On the other hand,
the parameters entering these theories need to be calculated from the
structural data. I will give a summary of recent approaches to solve
the above problems and discuss applications on different
light-harvesting and reaction center complexes revealing different
strategies for efficient light-harvesting.
*BIO:* Born 1970 in Zittau (Germany). Study of physics at
Humboldt-University Berlin (Germany), diploma (master degree) 1995, 1998
PhD degree in theoretical physics. 1999-2001 Feodor Lynen research
scholar of Alexander von Humboldt-foundation at California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena (USA). 2002-2009 head of junior research group
(Emmy-Noether program of German Research Foundation) at Free University
Berlin (Germany), institute of chemistry and biochemistry. Since 2009
head of division Theoretical Biophysics at Johannes Kepler University,
Linz (Austria). Research: Theory of charge and excitation energy
transfer and optical spectra of biological macromolecules, dynamical
theory and its parametrization by quantum chemical/electrostatic methods
and molecular dynamics simulations.
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