Lunch Pitch: Lighting up life, feeding mathematicians and plants in pain

Biomolecules ‘speak and understand’ the natural language of biological processes as they occur in cells and organisms. An outstanding challenge is not only to determine the structure, but indeed understanding the function of fundamental biological entities, such as proteins, whose dimensions are below the diffraction limit of light (few nanometers). Thanks to our ability to control materials and light-matter interactions with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution, we can experimentally access essential biological processes on the nanoscale. By exploiting electromagnetic radiation to excite collective motion of free electrons, known as surface plasmons polaritons, in engineered nanomaterials, it is possible to control light properties (such as amplitude, phase and polarization) on sub-diffraction volumes. In parallel, progress towards non-invasive biomolecular specificity via detection of vibrational signatures and their correlations at very high spectral and temporal resolution, have been brought by the development of two-dimensional mid-infrared time domain spectroscopy. Although measuring correlations between coherent vibrations in organic molecular systems is technically challenging, it could bring the highest degree of biomolecular specificity.

In our lab we are developing a powerful experimental approach with extremely short temporal (up to few femtoseconds) and small spatial (up to few nanometers) resolution, which can provide information about the structural conformation of biomolecules, thus bridging the gap between structure and function of the molecule.

Interested in: connecting with anyone who is interested in exploring both experimentally and theoretically the structure of relevant biomolecules (for instance, proteins such as the transcription factor GCN4, or the neurodegenerative biomarkers α-synuclein). In particular, it would be extremely beneficial for me to find potential collaborators who are using complementary experimental techniques or developing numerical approaches to interpret the experimental results we are aiming to obtain in our lab.