Phil Long

Being a young buck in the world of graduate school, I've much to learn and less to teach. Hence, I'll keep it broad: I'm interested in how the molecular structure of photoactive biological molecules allows the energy of photons to be transduced in useful ways. Ultimately, I'd like to understand these effects sufficiently well to design synthetic systems driven by light. This could mean alternative energy work or a number of other directions.

I intend to employ new ultrafast laser spectroscopies (working jointly with Greg Engel in Physical Chemistry), quantum and molecular modeling, and experimental molecular biology techniques.

The bacterial reaction center offers an array of pertinent questions, so I will focus my initial efforts here.