Mission statement

The mission is to study and develop an understanding of the physical aspects of life processes and to teach the fundamentals of physics and biophysics and their application in the life sciences.

There is strong emphasis on the development and application of advanced spectroscopy and imaging techniques to study structure/dynamics/function relationships in life systems and these methods are also applied to study structure and dynamics of food. The techniques span a broad range of time and length scales, from subpicoseconds to days and from nanometers to meters (i.e. from molecules to organisms). A large part of the research is concerned with studying the physical aspects of light-driven processes in photosynthetic organisms. The work is demanding from a technical/technological experimental point of view as well as from the point of data analysis and model building. The research is strongly interdisciplinary and requires a broad range of collaborations, both at the national and international level. To meet these requirements the group participates in various (inter)national networks. The group has also committed itself to running/supporting the Wageningen NMR Centre and Microspectroscopy Centre, facilities which are available for the entire Wageningen UR community.