ProfessorJasper van Thor

Professor of Molecular Biophysics

Department of Life Sciences - Faculty of Natural Sciences

  • Professor of Molecular Biophysics
    Department of Life Sciences - Faculty of Natural Sciences
  • 020 7594 5071 (Work)
  • 703, Sir Ernst Chain Building, South Kensington Campus, United Kingdom

BIO

Jasper J. van Thor is Professor of Molecular Biophysics at Imperial College London. He obtained his MSc in Chemistry in 1993 from the University of Amsterdam. His Ph.D in Chemistry was awarded in 1999 also from the University of Amsterdam in the field of oxygenic photosynthesis. In 2000 he joined the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics at the University of Oxford under Dame Louise Johnson and was awarded the EMBO research fellowship and the HFSP long term research fellowship. In 2002 he was awarded the Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. He joined Imperial College London in 2007 where he established the Ultrafast Spectroscopy Laboratory and Molecular Biophysics group. He is director of the Imperial College network of frontiers in ultrafast measurement, and he is director and PI of the Imperial College Laboratory for Ultrafast X-ray Diffraction (LUXD). He uses the combined approaches of ultrafast laser spectroscopy and ultrafast X-ray crystallography to interrogate structural dynamics, in addition to theory development for ultrafast science. He has worked on ultrafast spectroscopy and crystallography of light sensitive proteins, including photoreceptors, fluorescent proteins and photosynthesis, in addition to materials science, chemical dynamics and chemical crystallography. He has worked extensively at X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) since 2010, using LCLS, SACLA, PAL-XFEL, SwissFEL and the European XFEL. His works focuses on ultrafast phenomena in molecular crystals.

News, Software and Publication links - You can find links to all the below highlights in the sidebar:

Making molecules dance to our tune reveals what drives their first movements

Observing a Hula-Twist Photo-isomerisation Using Ultrafst Crystallography

Advances and opportunities in ultrafast X-ray crystallography and ultrafast structural optical crystallography of nuclear and electronic protein dynamics

First movie of energy transfer in photosynthesis solves decades-old debate: Ultrafast Infrared Structural Crystallography of photosynthetic exciton dynamics

Populations and coherence in ultrafast X-ray crystallography Int. Rev. Phys. Chem

Fastest-ever molecular imaging reveals reaction crucial for vision

TSRC Protein Dynamics workshop

One Day Symposium on Ultrafast Vibrational Dynamics of Biomolecules, Thursday 29 April 2010 at Imperial College London

Ultrafast Laser lab launches

Ultrafast spectroscopy modelling toolbox AVAILABLE V1.0

PyLDM - Open Source Lifetime Density Analysis

FACULTY

  • Faculty of Natural Sciences

POSITION NAME

  • Professor of Molecular Biophysics

FIELDS OF RESEARCH