Séminar: Light Matter Interaction: The role of quantum coherence

Sabre KAIS will present his research Monday February 24th 2014 at 2.00pm in the seminar room, located in the ICube Mechanics Department (4 Boussingault Street - 67000 Strasbourg).

Title: Light Matter Interaction : The role of quantum coherence

Abstract: Sunlight is the most abundant energy source available on earth, and therefore to design systems that can effectively gather, transfer or store solar energy has been a great continuing challenge for researchers. To achieve this, a very intuitive approach is to learn from Mother Nature. In light harvesting organisms, the major mechanism that converts light energy into chemical energy is photosynthesis. I will discuss the role of quantum coherence in the energy transport in photosynthesis and solar cells.

Bio: In 1989, Prof.  Kais received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the Hebrew University. After a postdoctoral appointment at Harvard University 1989-1994, he joined the Chemistry Department at Purdue in 1994 as an Assistant Professor. Since 2002, he has been a full professor of Chemical Physics. He received the National Science Foundation Career Award in 1997. He was also awarded the Purdue University Faculty Scholar Award (2004-2009), and the Guggenheim Fellowship Award (2005). In 2007, Prof. Kais was the Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2012, he received the Sigma Xi Research Award. He has courtesy professorship appointments at both the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Physics at Purdue and member of Qatar  Environment and Energy Research Institute. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers and served on the editorial board of several chemistry and physics journals. Recently, with his colleagues, established a new center, Quantum Information for Quantum Chemistry (QIQC)
sakais@qf.org.qa