Excitonics + Photochemisty (ExP) Lab

Team leader: Jeffrey Gorman @ Durham University, Dept. Chemistry

Open PhD Position [13/03/2026]

We have a fully funded PhD position (Home [UK] students only) on high-throughput synthesis of organic molecular dyes, toward applications in quantum computing. Email Jeff with a CV and Cover Letter to apply!

Harnessing Biology to Accelerate Quantum Materials Discovery

Interested in joining us? We welcome talented researchers from chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering backgrounds. Get in touch →

What We Do

We combine three disciplines to unlock biology’s potential for materials chemistry:

Synthetic Organic Chemistry – Design and synthesise new semiconductor building blocks
DNA Nanotechnology – Program biological assembly to create precise molecular architectures
Ultrafast Spectroscopy – Measure quantum properties at the nanoscale

This unique combination lets us explore vast chemical space rapidly, identifying the next generation of materials for quantum sensors, LEDs, photovoltaics, and quantum information systems.

By programming DNA to assemble organic semiconductors with nanometer precision, we create libraries of thousands of quantum materials in parallel—accelerating discovery by a million-fold compared to traditional methods.