Photosynthesis: Molecular Approaches to Solar Energy Conversion

Jian-Ren Shen is a Professor at the Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Science, Okayama University, Japan. He obtained his PhD degree from the University of Tokyo in 1990, and worked in Dr. Yorinao Inoue’s group in RIKEN Institute before becoming a full professor at Okayama University. His is a world leader in the structural biology of photosynthetic membrane protein complexes, and solved the high-resolution structure of photosystem II from cyanobacteria.

Kimiyuki Satoh is an Emeritus Professor at Okayama University, Japan. He earned the PhD degree from the University of Tokyo in 1972, and is the first one to isolate and identify the photosystem II reaction center. His contributions to photosynthesis research have been recognized by a number of awards including the Finsen Medal from the International Union of Photobiology. He was a Consulting Editor for the Advances in Photosynthesis and Respiration series during 1999-2005.

Allakhverdiev S.I. is the Head of Controlled Photobiosynthesis Laboratory at the Timiryazev Institute of Plant Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), and several other affiliations at different institutes. He received his PhD from the Institute of Biophysics, USSR in 1984, and worked in many world-leading laboratories including Robert Carpentier, Norio Murata, etc. Allakhverdiev S.I. has authored (or co-authored) more than 350 research papers, 37 book chapters, 7 patents and 9 books.