Felix Ho

Felix Ho was born in Hong Kong in 1976, but grew up in Sydney, Australia from a young age. He attended the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and completed a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry (Hons I, University Medal) in 1997, and Bachelor of Laws (University Medal) in 1999. During this time he also studied for one semester at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. After a six-month period as a research assistant for Prof. Justin Gooding at UNSW in 2000, working on surface immobilisation chemistry and atomic force microscopy for biosensor applications, Felix began his PhD studies at Cambridge University on a Cambridge Australia Trust Packer Scholarship, under Prof EAH (Lisa) Hall at the Institute of Biotechnology. His project involved the development of a fluorescence assay for the direct detection of single base pair mismatches in duplex DNA using a strand exchange phenomenon, and involved techniques such as fluorescence and UV-Vis spectroscopy, standard molecular biological manipulations and analyses, organic synthesis and mathematical modelling.

Felix moved to Uppsala University in 2004 as a Marie Curie Post-doctoral Fellow in the group of Prof. Stenbjörn Styring, studying the water oxidation mechanism in the enzyme Photosystem II (PSII) using EPR spectroscopy. During this time he was also a visiting research fellow at the Australia National University on two occasions, working on ultra-low temperature UV-Vis spectroscopy of PSII, together with Prof. Elmars Krausz and Prof. Ron Pace. He began his position as an assistant professor (forskarassistent) in 2008, and his research interest has extended to the investigation of putative substrate and product channels in PSII using molecular dynamics simulations in parallel with construction and characterisation of in vivo organisms containing mutant PSII. He received the title of Docent (associate professor) in 2012 and is currently also one of two Directors of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Chemistry - Ångström Laboratory.