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Phillip Long, PhD
Hometown:Spokane, WA
Education:University of Chicago, PhD 2013
Email:plong1@uchicago.edu
Mentor: Greg Engel
The Big Picture
Nearly every photon absorbed by pigment-protein complexes in photosynthetic bacteria contributes to useful chemical work.
This remarkably high "quantum efficiency" is not adequately explained by traditional classical models, such as Forster Resonance Energy Transfer. Instead, coherent energy transfer models that incorporate ideas from quantum physics have proven more resilient. My experimental research combines femtosecond optical spectroscopy, molecular biology, and quantum-chemistry to elucidate the underpinning mechanisms used by photosynthetic bacteria to conduct this quantum process in very disordered environments.