2023-2024 Graduate Student Fellow
Faculty Advisor: Professor Naomi Ginsberg
Leo Hamerlynck is a 5th year Chemistry Ph. D. candidate in the Ginsberg group. Leo received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Arizona in 2018, where his undergraduate research was on surface chemistry of anatase thin films for photovoltaic applications.
Leo Hamerlynck’s graduate research focuses on energy transport within complex nanoscale systems, particularly photosynthetic systems. Leo uses time-resolved spectroscopic and microscopic techniques to study how energy carriers migrate following photoexcitation. Previously, he has used transient absorption anisotropy to characterize incoherent intra-complex energy transfer in a biomimetic light-harvesting protein complex, demonstrating the significant impact that disorder in energy and chromophore configuration have on long-ranged energy transport in such systems.
As a Kavli ENSI Fellow, Leo will continue this investigation into inter-complex energy transfer in natural photosynthetic systems. His focus in the near term will be to expand the current capabilities of the group’s time-resolved scattering microscope to accommodate the fast temporal resolution required to study energy transfer in photosynthetic membranes. By targeted modification of photosynthetic membranes in collaboration with Masa Iwai’s group, he will investigate what elements of their design lead to efficient light harvesting in these complex nanoscale systems.