Bridge mediated photoinduced ultrafast heterogeneous electron transfer (ET) from a molecularly anchored chromophore to a semiconductor surface is modelled theoretically. The continuum levels of the semiconductor substrate are taken into account in the numerical calculations via a polynomial expansion. Electron transfer for the direct injection case in the strong coupling limit is studied and compared with cases where intermediate bridging states are successively introduced to weaken the effective electronic coupling. The role of vibronic coherences in the strong electronic coupling limit as well as in off-resonant bridge mediated electron transfer is also discussed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.