BME Lecture Series (ZOOM): Enrico Gratton, UC Irvine

Seminar via Zoom link: https://uci.zoom.us/j/800931252

Dynamic Super Resolution in Optical Microscopy

Abstract: Optical super-resolution has been around for more than 10 years. Yet, super-resolution is mainly applied to produce stunning images at the 10-20 nanometer scale of the interior of a cell. This kind of super-resolution imaging had limited applications to reveal the dynamics, motion and interactions of molecules at the nanoscale, which is at the basis of life. In our lab, we have been working in filling this gap by developing enabling technologies that will open the potential of super-resolution imaging to be dynamic at the microsecond-millisecond-temporal scale.

Bio: Enrico Gratton received his doctorate in physics in 1969 from the University of Rome. In 1986, while a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Gratton was awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the first national facility dedicated to fluorescence spectroscopy: the Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics (LFD). The LFD is a state-of-the-art fluorescence laboratory for use by local, national, and international scientists. It is committed to service in a user-oriented facility, as well as to research and development of fluorescence instrumentation and theory. The LFD has reached international recognition for the development of instrumentation for time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy using frequency domain methods. In 2006 the entire LFD laboratory moved to its current location at the new Natural Sciences II building at UC Irvine. Gratton remains principal investigator of the LFD and holds joint appointments as professor in the UCI departments of biomedical engineering,and physics, and in the College of Medicine. Gratton collaborates with other UCI researchers in the areas of engineering, medicine, physical science, information and computer science, biological science and UCI's Beckman Laser Institute (BLI).