Postdoctoral researcher & lab manager, University of Birmingham — theoretical physics and chemistry applied to living systems
I'm a postdoctoral researcher and lab manager at the University of Birmingham. I am interested in understanding how life utilises chemistry to function. I have a background in theoretical physics and chemistry, and I apply it to biological systems.
- Nuclear quantum effects in biochemical reactions
- DNA mutations
- Protein folding
- Assembly theory and molecular complexity
- Life detection
| Year | Title | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | CBR-db: A Cheminformatic Database for Biochemical Reaction Analysis | ACS Synthetic Biology |
| 2025 | Understanding water behaviour on 2D material interfaces through single-molecule motion on h-BN and graphene | Nature Communications |
| 2025 | The Emergence of Chirality from Metabolism | arXiv (preprint) |
| 2024 | Measuring Molecular Complexity | ACS Central Science |
| 2023 | Multiscale simulations reveal the role of PcrA helicase in protecting against spontaneous point mutations in DNA | Scientific Reports |
| 2022 | An open quantum systems approach to proton tunnelling in DNA | Communications Physics |
| 2021 | Quantum biology: An update and perspective | Quantum Reports |
Full list on Google Scholar
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| assemblytheorytools | Centralised Python toolkit for assembly theory calculations, with C++/Rust backends and RDKit/NetworkX support. |
| assemblycfg | String assembly index calculator using the smallest-grammar Re-Pair algorithm. |
| CBRdb | Curated biochemical database integrating and refining KEGG and ATLAS data for reaction analysis. |
| nqetools | Toolkit for running nuclear quantum effect calculations with i-PI, MACE potentials and PLUMED. |
| openmmnqe | OpenMM molecular dynamics with nuclear quantum effects — ring-polymer dynamics and adaptive quantum thermal baths. |
| reactiontools | Calculator-agnostic ASE workflows for transition state and nudged elastic band calculations. |
| vasp-interactive | Stream-based ASE calculator for VASP, cutting SCF cycles via interactive and socket-I/O modes. |
| HEOM.jl | Hierarchical Equations of Motion in Julia for simulating open quantum systems. |
The ELIFE-ASU repositories are from my time with the Emergence of Life group at Arizona State University, and remain actively maintained. vasp-interactive is the Scanlon Materials Theory Group (Birmingham) fork of the original calculator, which I contribute to.
Assembly theory quantifies the complexity of an object by the minimal number of steps needed to build it from fundamental building blocks — treating objects not as simple particles but as entities defined by their possible formation histories, and giving a measure of how much selection was required to produce them.
- Website • louieslocombe.github.io
- Email • l.slocombe (at) bham.ac.uk
- X • @louieslocombe
- ResearchGate • Louie Slocombe
- ORCiD • 0000-0002-6986-5526