Advent calendar - December 4th - Dr. Kiana Moghaddam

In the Zernike Institute Advent Calendar, we are presenting 24 short spotlights in December. In these specials, we highlight PhD students, postdocs, and technicians of our research groups - providing a glimpse into their typical day at work. In Episode 4 meet Dr. Kiana Moghaddam.

I am working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Zernike Institute of Advanced Materials in the Theoretical & Computational Chemistry group. My typical workday starts with switching on my laptop and of course a mug of tea. Afterwards, I check my to-do list for the day. The tasks are normally a mix of paper writing, running calculations, data analysis, and supervising the students. Depending on my priorities for the week the order may change. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I had full access to the lab since as a computational chemist my lab is my laptop and our local computer cluster.

My research focuses on employing computational tools to obtain atomic-level mechanistic insights into light-induced processes in molecular motors. It is relevant for the development of transformative technologies utilizing light such as photopharmacology, optogenetics, bioimaging, and photodynamic therapies. In the collaborative project with experimentalists, our main goal is to investigate two individual functions of motor rotation and bright emission in a light-driven rotary molecular motor which can provide insight into developing a new class of photofunctional hybrid molecules.

Contact: Dr. Kiana Moghaddam