Congratulations to Jeffrey Melzer, who is one of 20 regional finalists for the 2018 Educational Award sponsored by Edmund Optics.

We use computational approaches that harness sparsity to detect particularly small particles relative to background noise in lensfree holographic microscopy. We just published this approach (Optics Express), which will help us to create sensitive, portable, cost-effective, and high dynamic-range biosensors.

Earlier this year, our lab was awarded federal grants for the design and fabrication of nanophotonic structures on microtoroid chemical sensors (DTRA), and for the design and fabrication of nanophotonic structures on image sensors (NSF). The chemical sensing project is led by Judith Su’s lab.

Congratulations to both Maryam and Weilin, who transferred from Master’s students to Ph.D. students this year.

Earlier this year, we published what we believe is the fastest manipulation of nanoparticles using optical tweezers to date (ACS Nano). This high-speed manipulation can enable rapid prototyping of 3D nanofabricated devices.

It’s been a long time since I posted any news, so I’m going to cover several important events from the past year in a few posts today.