Francesca Calegari

Research

Francesca Calegari leads the Attosecond Science division at DESY, and is professor of physics at the University of Hamburg. The main focus of her research is to track and ideally control in real time the electron dynamics occurring in systems with increasing complexity from simple molecules to molecules of biological interest and nanostructured materials. To this purpose, her group develops table-top light sources providing extreme time resolution (from a few femtoseconds down to attoseconds). In her group, XUV attosecond technology is used to understand the role of the electron dynamics in the photo-induced chemical changes that occur in our own biomolecules (e.g. DNA and proteins) in a bottom-up approach. Her research will allow to disclose the physical origin of a variety of light-driven processes of crucial importance in photo-chemistry and photo-biology. Her approach is fully synergetic with the possibility to resolve structural changes in biomolecules through femtosecond time-resolved x-ray diffraction using XUV/X-ray Free Electron Lasers (FELs) .