Prof. Ferdinand Grozema

The research field of Ferdinand Grozema can be broadly characterized as “dynamics of charges and excited states”, using a combination of ultrafast spectroscopy, unique microwave conductivity techniques, computational chemistry and materials synthesis. The overall goal is to achieve a fundamental understanding of the relation between molecular and solid-state structure and the opto-electronic properties, in most cases targeting energy applications. While the subject range is very broad, including charge transfer in DNA and synthetic donor-acceptor systems, charge transport in perovskites and organic semiconductors, single molecule conductance, singlet exciton fission and photochemical up conversion, the underlying principles are very general and can be applied for many other materials and properties.

Academic background

Ferdinand Grozema (1973) studied chemistry at the University of Groningen, graduating in 1998 in Computational Organic Chemistry under supervision of Dr. Piet Th. Van Duijnen. He obtained his PhD degree at the Delft University of Technology in 2003 under supervision of Prof. dr. Laurens D.A. Siebbeles and Dr. John M. Warman on a thesis describing a combined experimental and theoretical study of charge transport along conjugated molecular wires. In 2007/2008 he was a visiting scholar at Northwestern University in Evanston, USA in the group of Prof. Mark A. Ratner where he focused on the theoretical description of charge transfer in DNA.