Rate My Professor Jan Verlet

Professor Jan Verlet serves as Head of the Department of Chemistry at Durham University. He obtained his MSci in Chemistry from King's College London in 1999 and his PhD from the same institution in 2003. Following his doctoral studies, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. He joined Durham University in 2006 as a Lecturer, progressing to Senior Lecturer in 2012, Reader in 2013, and Professor in 2016. His academic career has been marked by prestigious fellowships, including the EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship from 2006 to 2011 and the European Research Council Starting Grant from 2012 to 2017. In 2016, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Verlet has received major awards such as the JILA Visiting Fellowship in 2019, the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan Prize in 2021 for his work on electron-molecule reactions, and the RSC Bourke-Liversidge Prize in 2023 for pioneering contributions to the spectroscopy and dynamics of anions. He currently holds positions as Co-editor of the International Review in Physical Chemistry since 2018 and Senior Scientist at the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry in Prague from 2024 to 2029.

Verlet's research investigates chemical and physical changes in molecules upon interaction with photons and electrons. His key areas include quantum dynamics of isolated anions, photon-driven chemistry relevant to photoactive proteins, DNA, and atmospheric chemistry, electron-driven chemistry in biological electron transport chains and dense molecular clouds in the interstellar medium, and photochemistry at aqueous interfaces. His group has developed novel spectroscopic methods to observe electrons at the water/air interface, real-time electron-molecule reactions, electronic and nuclear dynamics along reaction coordinates, the role of non-valence states in anions, and solvation effects in electron capture. Influential publications include 'Spectroscopy and dynamics of the hydrated electron at the water/air interface' (Nature Communications, 2024), 'Photochemistry of the pyruvate anion produces CO2, CO, CH3-, CH3, and a low energy electron' (Nature Communications, 2022), 'Ultrafast dynamics of low-energy electron attachment via a non-valence correlation-bound state' (Nature Chemistry, 2018), 'Ultrafast above-threshold dynamics of the radical anion of a prototypical quinone electron-acceptor' (Nature Chemistry, 2013), and 'Low-energy Shape Resonances of a Nucleobase in Water' (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2023). These contributions have advanced understanding of light- and electron-driven processes with applications in atmospheric science, biology, and astrophysics.