Björn Reinhard Receives NSF CAREER Award
The National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER awards are presented to teacher-scholars who are “most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.” The Department is proud to announce that this year, Professor Björn Reinhard has received this important award for his proposed research on “Frequency Domain Plasmon Fluctuation Spectroscopy For Single Biopolymer Mechanical Sensing.”
In this work, he plans to develop novel plasmon fluctuation spectroscopy with which to characterize the mechanical properties of individual biopolymers with unlimited observation time. By transitioning from a time to a frequency domain analysis, his plasmon fluctuation spectroscopy will provide insight into the structural properties of short DNAs, RNAs, and their protein complexes on the single molecule level. This research is part of his Nano-Bio Interface Lab, which aims to design, implement, and characterize new tools for imaging and manipulation of “hard” (inorganic) and “soft” (biological) materials with the ultimate goal of generating reliable tools that can provide insights into fundamental biological processes on a single molecule level.
In addition, Prof. Reinhard’s project will offer high school, undergraduate, and graduate students the opportunity to participate in an exciting collaborative research and education program. Dr. Reinhard plans to invite undergraduates and interested high school students who have completed his NanoCamp to obtain hands-on research experience in the interdisciplinary research effort.