In this talk I will introduce quantum biology, the synthesis of modern quantum science & technology with biological systems. As a specific paradigm of this synthesis, I will describe biological quantum sensing using radical-pair reactions, and discuss why such biochemical magnetometers ideally demonstrate the premise of quantum biology. In short, because they realize quantum measurement dynamics, and further, they require measures of quantum coherence for their understanding. I will then present recent work pushing the study of quantum biological effects into the cellular environment. This is achieved by using a fundamental quantum-information concept, the Wigner-Yanase information. We arrive at a sort of "quantum biological uncertainty relation", which connects the product of a biological resource and a biological figure of merit, with a measure of coherence based on the Wigner-Yanase information. Finally, I will discuss the general scientific and technological outlook of the synthesis quantum+bio.

Iannis Kominis received his Diploma in Electrical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens in 1996 and his Ph.D. at the Physics Department of Princeton University (USA) in 2000. His thesis concerned scattering of high energy polarized electrons off polarized 3He nuclei. His academic genealogy tree is here. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University (2001-2002) and at the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2002-2003). In 2004 he joined the Department of Physics as a Lecturer. He was promoted to an Assistant Professor in 2009 and to an Associate Professor in 2018. His research interests are spin structure of nucleus/nucleons, scattering of high-energy polarized electrons off polarized nuclei, optical pumping and polarized alkali atoms and noble gases, quantum metrology and sensitive atomic magnetometers, laser cooling and trapping, precision quantum measurements, quantum noise in atomic vapors, quantum phenomena in biological systems, quantum physics of photosynthesis and the chemical compass, quantum foundations of spin chemistry, quantum vision, quantum biometrics.