My vision

I envision a world empowered by new chemically-active photonic technologies. Light is a sophisticated tool that can selectively deliver energy to a particular set of molecules while literally passing through other materials. To harness light and use it as a tool, we use nanophotonics. These tiny structures guide and concentrate light to strongly interact with the chemistry of our choice. The resulting photonic chips will provide science and society with novel functionalities. For example, imagine biosensing technology powerful to quickly diagnose disease, yet so cheap and accessible that you can perform a simple health-check, at home, long-before you are sick. What if we could manipulate molecules bond by bond, taking them apart and reassembling them just like the ball and stick models we explored as children. To pioneer this new field of chemically active nanophotonics, much like giving an artist a new color to work with, my mission is to discover new materials and techniques available for nanophotonics, explore their properties and finally, to deliver these materials into the hands of other creative scientists.

Giving an Artist a new Color: The Story of Tyrian Purple

Why is purple associated with Royalty? In the early days of dying textiles, purple was extremely difficult to make. Making one ounce of the dye requires the gland secretions from 10,000 murex snails. This collective secretion was then chemically changed by sunlight: from white, to yellow-green, green, violet and eventually to red. Stopping at precisely the right time produced Tyrian purple. The extreme rarity of this new color meant cloth makers could adorn their royal patrons with a color synonymous with royalty and power. This power was so socially recognized that the Roman emperor Nero decreed that anyone who wore the color was to be put to death (aside from himself, naturally). Upon making Tyrian purple available to Renaissance painters, purple gave them a new way to signify importance and power in their paintings, often used for the capes of angels and the Virgin Mary. The social importance of purple gave them a new tool for their creativity.

Much like giving an artist a new color of paint, I believe that realizing truly innovative applications will start by linking creative minds with new materials that exhibit interesting and perhaps strange properties. Unlike the color purple, I believe access and simplicity are critical to maximize the impact of these new materials. The accessibility of computers and smart-phones are such an example: give practically untrained people access to a powerful, flexible platform and they will innovate new technologies never considered during the initial design stage.

My Work: Expanding Available colors for Nanophotonics

What "colors" should we use? Simply put, molecules are made up of atoms sharing electrons, which bind them together, each of which we can probe with different wavelengths. At high-energy "blue" wavelengths, such as using the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, we can directly interact with electrons. These wavelengths allow us to kick electrons out of their orbitals to start chemical reactions. Meanwhile, lower-energy "red" wavelength, such at the infrared, allows us to move the nuclei (the center of an atom) directly to excite vibrations. To reach my vision of strong light-chemistry coupling, I am exploring and developing new photonic materials, ways to handle these materials, and applications enabled by the unique properties of these materials.

Two things are critical to this mission: providing access to these materials and ideas to other researchers and inspiring a general audience. I believe that science can only be done with the support of people like you—financially and with aspiring talent.