Building new tools to study biomolecules
Our effort is split between developing new physical tools to probe biological molecules, and
using our tools to make new measurements. We choose problems by looking in unexplored regimes of time and space; we combine nanofabrication, lasers, microfluidics, electronics, biochemistry, and
computers to generate data; and we apply statistics and physical modeling to understand the data.
Research Areas
Previous projects (links coming soon...)
Biological solitons, twisting instability in fibrillar nanomaterials,
carbon nanotube electronics at low temperature and high magnetic field,
Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers of magnetic nanocrystals, redox cycling in
self-assembled molecular junctions, Mesoamerican archaeoastronomy, feedback-induced
oscillations in the Tiger Salamander eye, iterated complex polynomials and fractals,
electrochemical detection of TNT, homebuilt STM, computer control with eye movements,
News
Pet Elephant!
Check out the newest addition to our family:
a pet elephant.
Comings and goings
Welcome to postdoc Halil Bayraktar! Halil just finished his PhD in chemistry at UMass Amherst and will be working on trapping bacteriorhodopsins.
Also welcome to undergrads Malcolm Campbell and Arhana Chattopadhyay. Malcolm is building a "biotic camera" (stay tuned to find out what that means),
and Arhana is working on using live yeast as a chromatographic separation medium. Orpha Rivera is departing to grad school to study graphic design. Bon Voyage Orpha!
Lab outing (5/18/08)
We took a hike up
Mount Monadnock. And then we got some
real exercise.
Hardware trap paper published (5/2/08)
Adam's paper with W. E. on an ABEL trap that performs feedback photon-by-photon using hardware tracking was
published in Optics Express.
First trapping (4/30/08)
Alex got the ABEL trap working and trapped our first beads.
Hooray!
Nan starts rotation (2/4/08)
Nan Yang studied physics at University of Toronto and has a background in optics. Welcome Nan!
Students take the plunge (2/4/08)
Alex and Yiqiao officially joined the lab. Hooray!
Katie is promoted! (2/4/08)
Katie will be working with the Liu Group from now on. Good luck Katie, and thanks!
Labwarming party (1/14/08)
Thanks to the contractors and building staff for making us such beautiful labs! Check out the labs (and the party)
here.
Sijia finishes rotation (1/14/08)
Thanks to Sijia for his hard work during the rotation, and for all his help opening Thorlabs packages :)
New photo album up (12/18/07)
A new
Picasa album shows some snapshots of good times in the lab.
