Figuring out light

Linn Lep­pert inves­ti­gates a fun­damental bio­logi­cal phe­no­men­on: pho­tosyn­thesis, the pro­cess in which plants and bacte­ria con­vert the ener­gy pro­vided by light into chem­ical ener­gy. As a physi­cist she is inter­ested in the un­derly­ing quan­tum me­chani­cal pro­cess­es. The goal of her Inter­na­tional Junior Re­search Group “Elec­tronic exci­ta­tions in light-convert­ing sys­tems” is to gain in­sight into the ener­getics and the trans­fer of elec­trons excit­ed by sun­light. A de­tailed un­der­stand­ing of these prin­ciples is an im­portant pre­requi­site for de­velop­ing and im­prov­ing tech­nolo­gies that use sun­light as an ener­gy source, e.g. pho­tovol­taics. Linn Lep­pert be­lieves that “It is an excit­ing vision to use con­cepts taken from the field of biolo­gy and apply it to solar cells”.

Linn Lep­pert re­turns to the Uni­versi­ty of Bay­reuth where she had al­ready worked as a post­doc after gain­ing her PhD in theo­retical phys­ics in 2013. From 2015 to 2017 she took on a re­search resi­dence at the Uni­versi­ty of Cali­for­nia, Berkeley, USA, fund­ed by the Alex­ander von Hum­boldt Founda­tion.