活动

Professor Graham R. Fleming, FRS, NAS

 

Biographical Sketch

        Professor Graham Fleming, who was appointed Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Berkeley in 2009, has been at the forefront of a major revolution in the biophysical sciences. Through joint appointments as Melvin Calvin Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, director of Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division, and co-director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3), he has spearheaded the creation of entire new scientific disciplines, while maintaining his own ground-breaking investigations into ultrafast chemical and biological processes, in particular the primary steps of photosynthesis.

 

        Born in Barrow, England, in 1949, Professor Fleming earned his Bachelor's of Science degree from the University of Bristol in 1971, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of London in 1974. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Melbourne, Australia, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1979. There, he rose through the academic ranks to become the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor, a post he held for ten years, starting in 1987. At the University of Chicago, he also served for three years as the Chair of the Chemistry Department. In that role, he led the creation of University of Chicago’s first new research institute in more than 50 years, the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.

 

        In 1997, he came to the University of California, Berkeley as a professor of chemistry, and he started and directed a new division of physical biosciences for Berkeley Lab. In recognition of his organizational and management skills, he was named Berkeley Lab's Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences in 2001. He was named Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Deputy Director in 2005. Among his accomplishments was the creation of the world's first Synthetic Biology Department at a major scientific research institute.

 

        Throughout his administrative career, Professor Fleming has remained a highly active and successful scientific researcher. He has authored or co-authored more than 444 publications, and is widely considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on ultrafast processes. His ultimate goal is to develop artificial photosynthesis that would provide humanity with clean, efficient and sustainable energy.

The provision of sustainable energy is the defining problem of the 21st century.  The energy “problem” is a set of inter-related technological, scientific, economic, environmental and sociological challenges. In this seminar, Professor Fleming will discuss these challenges and illustrate some potential solutions by means of examples of specific programs at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.