Presenter

Melih Sener is a theoretical biophysicist at UIUC Beckman Institute specializing in the harvesting of sunlight in nature as an energy source to sustain life. The questions addressed in his computational work include how cellular mechanisms achieve high efficiency, robustness, and optimality, and what we can learn from nature to design better solar energy solutions. 15 of his collaborative publications over the past decade form the basis of the energy conversion animations shown as part of 'Birth of Planet Earth'. As an extension of his quantitative studies of nature, he performs outreach on numerical literacy for the general public as a guide to informed policymaking.