Resolving bioenergetics and molecular interactions in energy, space, and time

Welcome to the research group of Naomi S. Ginsberg, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics, UC Berkeley!

We are pushing the limits of spatially resolved spectroscopy and time resolved microscopy in multiple modalities, tailored to answer fundamental and challenging questions that span chemistry, physics, and biology.

• What gives rise to the remarkable efficiency of photosynthetic light harvesting? How can energy flow be manipulated?  How can this guide solar energy technologies? 
  

• How can we leverage the nanometer focusing ability of electron optics in optical microscopy of living specimens? 
  

• What do the electric fields of optically excited molecules look like at close range?  How does this influence their interactions?
  

A common theme in our work is to investigate and seize on light-matter interactions in the near and far field, on ultraslow and ultrafast time scales, with light and electron optics, in vacuum and in the condensed phase.  Please consult the Research page for additional detail.

We acknowledge support from UC Berkeley, the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry, the Lindsay Memorial Fund in the College of Chemistry, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences, and the Biomolecular Nanotechnology Center of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) .