Congratulations to Erika Keil!

Erika Keil has successfully defended her thesis.

We extend our warmest congratulations to Erika Keil, who has successfully defended her thesis titled “Ultrafast spectroscopy with blue-green excitation to decipher light harvesting dynamics” in the Dynamic Spectroscopies group of Prof. Jürgen Hauer. 

In her thesis, Erika focused on the photophysical processes that occur in photosynthetic systems after they absorb light in the blue-green spectral region. This is especially relevant in marine organisms, which often rely on this portion of the solar spectrum as their primary source of energy. To investigate these processes, which occur at a femtosecond timescale, Erika built a custom transient absorption setup in which ultrashort, blue-green pulses are generated by a technique called Achromatic Second-Harmonic Generation. Using this instrument, she was able to clarify the long-debated energy transfer dynamics in Chlorophyll a, one of the most abundant photosynthetic pigments on Earth. 

Congratulations from the whole IMPRS-APS team, we wish you all the best for your future endeavors!