Nayab Majib Chaudhry

Doctoral project

Disentangling ultrafast elementary chemical processes in biologically relevant model systems

Understanding the solvation effects of water in biologically relevant molecules promises to unravel elementary steps in elementary bio- physical reactions. The effect of single water molecules on various naturally occurring biologically relevant molecules was successfully investigated before, even fully resolving all reactants and products. We propose to push the frontiers of such highly controlled and specific chemical-dynamics experiments by investigating the effects of multiple water molecules on different prototypical biomolecules, e.g., DNA bases. The ultrafast solvation dynamics will be investigated with femtosecond temporal resolution using strong-field ionization probes and multi-mass velocity-map imaging with Timepix3 detectors. In the future, complex systems will be investigated at large-scale photon research facilities such as EuXFEL, FLASH, PETRA III, or MAX IV.