Lisa Utschig is a Chemist in the Solar Energy Conversion Group at Argonne National Laboratory.  She earned a BA from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa and pursued graduate work at Northwestern University under the guidance of Thomas O’Halloran, obtaining a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry in 1995.  She began her career at Argonne National Laboratory in 1995 as a Fermi Postdoctoral Scholar and is currently the lead PI of the natural photosynthesis program.  She specializes in developing novel bioinorganic approaches for modifying photosynthetic proteins in order to probe nature’s photoinduced charge separation mechanisms and develop biohybrid complexes for the light-driven production of energy-rich molecules.  Her innovative designs couple nature’s reaction center chemistry with man-made chemistry to make new hybrid systems that enable and resolve fundamental mechanisms for coupling photons to fuel production.