Email: virginia.tsiouri@surrey.ac.uk 

Room: 03AZ04

Virginia is a PhD student investigating quantum coherence in bacterial photosynthetic systems. She has studied Biotechnology at the University of Ioannina, Greece, and holds an MSc in Biophysics from KU Leuven, Belgium. Since her undergraduate years, Virginia has recognised the need for an interdisciplinary approach to understand the remarkable nature of living systems. 

She is currently working on unraveling the mechanisms underpinning light harvesting in photosynthesis. More specifically, the aim is to study whether quantum coherence is contributing to its extremely high efficiency using a combination of molecular biology and spectroscopic techniques. This work encompasses a wide scope of applications ranging from more efficient energy production systems to the construction of room temperature quantum computers. Virginia hopes that quantum physics will provide insights into biological processes and that living systems will inspire us to conjecture new physical theories as well. 

Primary supervisor: Prof Johnjoe McFadden / Co-supervisor: Dr Youngchan Kim