Oxford Mathematics Roger Penrose Public Lecture

Does Life know about quantum mechanics? - Jim Al-Khalili

Physicists and chemists are used to dealing with quantum mechanics, but biologists have thus far got away without having to worry about this strange yet powerful theory of the subatomic world. However, times are changing. There is now solid evidence that enzymes use quantum tunnelling to accelerate chemical reactions, while plants and bacteria use a quantum trick in photosynthesis – sending lumps of sunlight energy in multiple directions at once. It even appears that some animals have the ability to use quantum entanglement – what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” – as a compass to ‘see’ the earth’s magnetic field. In our research at the University of Surrey we are discovering that life may even have evolved mechanisms to control genetic mutations caused by quantum tunnelling of protons between strands of DNA. Welcome to the exciting new field of quantum biology.

Primoz Skraba is a Senior Lecturer in Applied and Computational Topology. His research is broadly related to data analysis with an emphasis on topological data analysis. Generally, the problems he considers span both theory and applications. On the theory side, the areas of interest include stability and approximation of algebraic invariants, stochastic topology (the topology of random spaces), and algorithmic research. On the applications side, he focuses on combining topological ideas with machine learning, optimization, and  other statistical tools. Other applications areas of interest include visualization and geometry processing.

He received a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2009 and has held positions at INRIA in France and the Jozef Stefan Institute, the University of Primorska, and the University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia, before joining Queen Mary University of London in 2018. He is also currently a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute.