Photosynthesis is a biological process used by many cellular organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy, which is stored in organic compounds that can later be metabolized through cellular respiration to fuel the organism's activities. The term usually refers to oxygenic photosynthesis, where oxygen is produced as a byproduct and some of the chemical energy produced is stored in carbohydrate molecules such as sugars, starch, glycogen and cellulose, which are synthesized from endergonic reaction of carbon dioxide with water. Most plants, algae and cyanobacteria perform photosynthesis; such organisms are called photoautotrophs. Photosynthesis is largely responsible for producing and maintaining the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere, and supplies most of the biological energy necessary for complex life on Earth.
The Yusuf Hamied 1702 Chair of Chemistry is one of the senior professorships at the University of Cambridge, based in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.
Yusuf Khwaja Hamied is an Indian scientist, billionaire businessman and the chairman of Cipla, a generic pharmaceuticals company founded by his father Khwaja Abdul Hamied in 1935. He is also an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.
Christopher Abell was a British biological chemist who was a professor of biological chemistry at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry and Todd-Hamied Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. On his 2016 election to the Royal Society, Abell's research was described as having "changed the face of drug discovery."
Richard Henderson is a British molecular biologist and biophysicist and pioneer in the field of electron microscopy of biological molecules. Henderson shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank."Thanks to his work, we can look at individual atoms of living nature, thanks to cryo-electron microscopes we can see details without destroying samples, and for this he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry."
Peter John Hore is a British chemist and academic. He is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is the author of two Oxford Chemistry Primers on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and research articles primarily in the area of NMR, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), spin chemistry and magnetoreception during bird migration.
Howard Griffiths is a physiological ecologist. He is Professor of Plant Ecology in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He formerly worked for the University of Dundee in the Department of Biological Sciences. He applies molecular biology techniques and physiology to investigate the regulation of photosynthesis and plant water-use efficiency.
James Barber was a British senior research investigator and emeritus Ernst Chain professor of biochemistry at Imperial College London, Visiting Professor at the Polytechnic University of Turin and Visiting Canon Professor to Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.
Sir Shankar Balasubramanian is an Indian-born British chemist and Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is recognised for his contributions in the field of nucleic acids. He is scientific founder of Solexa and Cambridge Epigenetix.
Alfred William Rutherford is Professor and Chair in Biochemistry of Solar energy in the Department of Life sciences at Imperial College London.
The Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry is the University of Cambridge's chemistry department. It was formed from a merger in the early 1980s of two separate departments that had moved into the Lensfield Road building decades earlier: the Department of Physical Chemistry and the Department of Chemistry respectively. Research interests in the department cover a broad of chemistry ranging from molecular biology to geophysics. The department is located on the Lensfield Road, next to the Panton Arms on the South side of Cambridge. In December 2020, it was renamed for 30 years in recognition of a donation from Dr Yusuf Hamied, an alumnus of the department.
James Robert DurrantFRSC FLSW is a British photochemist. He is a professor of photochemistry at Imperial College London and Sêr Cymru Solar Professor at Swansea University. He serves as director of the centre for plastic electronics (CPE).
Judy Hirst is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Director of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
Water oxidation catalysis (WOC) is the acceleration (catalysis) of the conversion of water into oxygen and protons:
Wolfgang Lubitz is a German chemist and biophysicist. He is currently a director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion. He is well known for his work on bacterial photosynthetic reaction centres, hydrogenase enzymes, and the oxygen-evolving complex using a variety of biophysical techniques. He has been recognized by a Festschrift for his contributions to electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and its applications to chemical and biological systems.
Tuomas Knowles is a British scientist and Professor of Physical Chemistry and Biophysics at the Department of Chemistry and at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He is the co-director of the Cambridge Centre for Misfolding Diseases and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Prof. Knowles is a co-founder of four biotechnology companies: Fluidic Analytics, Wren Therapeutics, Xampla and Transition Bio. He was also the Cambridge Enterprise Academic Entrepreneur of the year in 2019.
Melinda Jane Duer is Professor of Biological and Biomedical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and was the first woman to be appointed to an academic position in the department. Her research investigates changes in molecular structure of the extracellular matrix in tissues in disease and during ageing. She serves as Deputy Warden of Robinson College, Cambridge. She is an editorial board member of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance.
Silvia Vignolini is an Italian physicist who is Director of research at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and Professor of Chemistry and Bio-materials in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Her research investigates natural photonics structures, the self-assembly of cellulose and light propagation through complex structures. She was awarded the KINGFA young investigator award by the American Chemical Society and the Gibson-Fawcett Award in 2018.
Sophie Elizabeth Jackson is a British biochemist and Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Cambridge. Her research considers protein folding and assembly, She is interested in topological knots, molecular complexes and the beta barrel protein.
Chiara Giorio is an Italian atmospheric chemist who is an Assistant Professor in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Christ's College and a Fellow of the Community for Analytical Measurement Science.
