Light-activated matter: from photo-electrochemical cells to optogenetics and quantum information systems

Giulia Galli is the Liew family professor of Molecular Engineering and professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, USA. She is also senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and the director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials. She is a leading expert in first principle molecular dynamics, with a focus on developing and using theoretical and computational methods to understand, predict and engineer materials properties. Method developments include electronic and vibrational spectroscopies, thermal transport, hybrid functionals and constrained density functional theory. Her team develops the WEST code, coupling first principle molecular dynamics with many body perturbation theory and advanced sampling methods. Domains of applications of Prof. Galli’s work include nanostructured materials, harvesting of sunlight, materials under extreme conditions, thermal transport, water and solutions and quantum information.

On September 10^th 2019, Prof. Giulia Galli delivered a plenary lecture at the conference “Molecular and materials simulation at the turn of the decade: Celebrating 50 years of CECAM”. This video of the lecture offers us a new opportunity to enjoy her presentation.

Light-activated matter: from photo-electrochemical cells to optogenetics and quantum information systems

We discuss first principles, computational methods and strategies to predict light-activated processes in sustainable materials for use in photoelectrochemical cells, optogenetic and quantum information systems.