KNI Special Seminar with Dr. Euan McLeod (B.S. '04)

"Soft-Material Nanophotonic Systems in Nanofabrication and Sensing"

Dr. Euan McLeod, Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona

Tuesday, October 7

12 pm in 104 Watson

Refreshments available afterwards in the Watson Lobby

Soft nanophotonic systems are the interaction of light with systems of nanometer-scale components in soft materials like liquids, colloids, or polymers. We have developed an optical positioning and linking (OPAL) approach for assembling 3D structures out of hundreds of multi-material microscale and nanoscale building blocks. This optical tweezers-based approach provides a route for fabricating nanophotonic materials and devices that were previously infeasible due to resolution demands, material needs, and/or tricky geometries. I will present computational approaches that we have developed for designing new photonic devices based on the assembly of discrete building blocks. I will also present our work using lensfree holographic on-chip microscopy in combination with microfluidic devices for high-throughput sensing of protein biomarkers, including interferon gamma and COVID-19 sensing. Our simple, cost-effective, and field-portable sensor platform relies on computational imaging to determine biomarker concentrations.

Euan McLeod is an Associate Professor in the Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona (UA). He is also an Associate Professor of the UA BIO5 Institute and an Affiliate Member of the UA Cancer Center. Euan is a Senior Member of SPIE and OSA. He won an NSF CAREER award in 2021 and has been recognized with a Photonics 100 and Edison Awards. Euan was a postdoc in Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering at UCLA, as well as a postdoc in Applied Physics at Caltech. Euan received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and his B.S., with honors, from Caltech. Euan's background and interests lie at the intersection of optics, nanoscience, and soft bio-materials science. He has published 49 papers on these topics in peer-reviewed journals and has been awarded 8 patents, with major contributions in the areas of high-speed varifocal lenses based on acoustic modulation, lensfree holographic imaging of nanoparticles, viruses, and biomarkers; and the use of optical tweezers in fabricating micro- and nano-structured materials.

Website: https://sites.arizona.edu/euanmc/