The Center for Nanoscale Imaging Sciences offers seed awards for research between Center PIs. The goal with these awards is to initiate new collaborative research directions and to support submissions of larger-scale proposals within the Center’s topical areas.
Summer 2024 Seed Awards
The Center granted three $55,000 seed awards to the following projects:
Advancing Single Particle Cryo-Electron Microscopy for Colloidal Nanoclusters
Yimo Han, Assistant Professor of Materials Science & NanoEngineering, and Matthew Jones, Gene and Norman Hackerman Junior Chair and Assistant Professor of Chemistry, were awarded a seed grant to use single particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to study the structure of nanoclusters. While this method is normally used to research proteins that are ten times larger, the PIs have combined their expertise in nanoclusters and cryo-EM to create a comprehensive plan for their research and demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The results could shed light on the fundamental growth mechanisms of nanoparticles and lead to improved synthesis, design, and engineering of the structure and properties of these nanomaterials.
Superradiant Super-Resolution Imaging and Single-Molecule Tracking
Shengxi Huang, Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering; Anna-Karin Gustavsson, Director of the Center for Nanoscale Imaging Sciences and Assistant Professor of Chemistry; Junichiro Kono, Karl F. Hasselmann Chair in Engineering and Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering; and Yuji Zhao, Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, were awarded a seed grant to develop novel superradiant fluorophores and superradiance-enhanced super-resolution imaging and single-molecule tracking to increase the brightness and emission rate of super-localization techniques. This would allow for better spatial resolution, temporal resolution, and localization precision and would profoundly impact imaging and sensing in biology, chemistry, and physics.
Super-Resolution Functional Photoacoustic Tomography for In Vivo Imaging
Lei Li, Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering; Han Xiao, Director of the SynthX Center and Associate Professor of Chemistry; and Ashok Veeraraghavan, Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, were awarded a seed grant to enhance photoacoustic tomography (PAT). PAT has been used to amplify optical imaging of biological samples, but not at subcellular resolution. They aim to develop super-resolution functional acoustic tomography (SRF-PAT) for in vivo imaging of the wholebody of rodents to enable visualization of metabolic functions in deep tissue.