Custer Speaker Series — Dr. Elena Rozhkova
Open to the public, our speaker series is designed for students and community members to hear from professionals on topics that broaden attendees’ understanding of the world and add depth to experiences. It is also an opportunity for our alumni and community members to engage with our students, potential future employees.
“Reprogramming Natural Light-Driven Mechanisms with Inorganic Nanostructures”
About this talk: Nanomaterials provide unique opportunities to design functional systems through size-, interface-, and structure-dependent properties. When inorganic nanostructures are combined with soft biological components, hybrid architectures can emerge that provide functionalities unavailable in either of these systems individually. In this talk, Rozhkova will discuss how inorganic nanostructures can be used to reprogram natural light-dependent mechanisms by coupling them with evolutionarily optimized biological photo-processes. In particular, Rozhkova will focus on opsins - light-sensitive transmembrane proteins that convert optical excitation into directed ion transport, considering them as modular biological elements for nanohybrid architectures. Using purple membranes isolated from Halobacterium salinarum, which contain the proton pump bacteriorhodopsin (bR), bio-inspired hybrid systems are constructed that redirect native photochemical pathways toward abiotic chemical transformations. These architectures enable light-driven nitrogen-to-ammonia (N₂→NH₃) conversion, carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction to carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH₄), and glycerol oxidation to value-added products under ambient conditions. Coupling the bR photocycle with plasmonic silver and gold nanoparticles (NPs) further allows the construction of an artificial cell capable of light-driven ATP synthesis, demonstrating how inorganic components can reprogram biological energy transduction. Finally, Rozhkova will describe an alternative strategy in which radioluminescent nanoparticles convert X-ray radiation into localized optical radiation in the brain, thereby providing wireless optogenetic modulation without the need for optical fiber implantation. Together, these examples demonstrate how inorganic nanostructures can be used to reprogram natural light-driven energy conversion mechanisms, as well as to develop new approaches to optogenetic control in the brain.
About Dr. Rozhkova: Dr. Elena A. Rozhkova, is a staff scientist and principal investigator at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy Nanoscale Science Research Center. Her research focuses on engineered nano–bio hybrid architectures that integrate functional nanomaterials with biological components to enable light-driven energy conversion, photocatalysis and remote modulation of chemical and biological processes. Her recent work includes bio-inspired systems for artificial photosynthesis, CO₂ conversion to value-added chemicals and abiotic nitrogen-to-ammonia conversion under ambient conditions. She served as an IEEE Nanotechnology Council Distinguished Lecturer (2021–2022). She previously held research appointments as a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at Tohoku University (Japan), followed by positions at Princeton University (Department of Chemistry) and the University of Chicago, before joining Argonne National Laboratory in 2007.
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