Personal Statement
Dr. Volk’s research interests focus on the application of time-resolved spectroscopy to the investigation of a broad range of chemical and biological processes. These include the dissociation and coherent motion of small molecules, inter- and intramolecular electron transfer in model systems and proteins, and ligand dynamics and energy relaxation in heme proteins.
In Liverpool, Dr. Volk started to investigate fast processes of protein folding, using a nanosecond temperature-jump setup with high signal-to-noise IR detection. With this highly sensitive setup, he made major world-recognised contributions to the current knowledge of fast protein folding dynamics, especially of alpha-helix folding dynamics.
More recently, he became involved in research on gold nanoparticles, esp. the structure and dissociation dynamics of peptide capping layers on such nanoparticles and the application of gold nanoparticles in photodynamic therapy.