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A Quantum Chemical Perspective of the Design Principles of Light Harvesting in photosynthetic organisms

  • Nano Colloquia
Speaker
Benedetta Mennucci
Affiliation
UniPi
Date
2026-10-15
Time
14:00
Venue
ON-SITE NEST Meeting room ONLINE https://link.nano.cnr.it/NanoColloquia
Host
Pisa Colloquia Committee

Photosynthetic organisms capture sunlight with high efficiency, but they also need to protect themselves when there is too much light, safely getting rid of the extra energy before it causes damage. In this seminar, I will show how multiscale models integrating quantum chemistry with classical models can reveal how these functions are encoded at the molecular level. By comparing cyanobacteria with plants, I will highlight the different strategies these organisms have evolved to balance efficient light harvesting with photoprotection.