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NANOSCALE BIOPHOTONICS

	Research Interests  Research Vacancies. Latest News. Meetings. Location Biographical Information  Undergraduate Lectures (updated for 11/12) School of Chemistry
On Galway bay, 28th October 2001.

Latest News:

• April 12: Congratulations to Michelle Hennigan (PhD student) who will shortly be starting a new job with Merck in the UK.
  
• 23 Mar. 12:  Dr. Chery Morris was conferred with her PhD.  She researched the use of fluorescence methods for characterizing thermoresponsive polymers.
• Feb. 12:  Michelle Hennigan was one of the two winners of the BOC postgraduate award.
  
• Jan. 12:  New water activity meter installed in the lab.  We have just acquired an A qualab Water Activity meter 4TE for bio-analytical applications.
  
• Sept. 11:  Amandine Calvet a PhD student in the Nanoscale Biophotonics Laboratory was awarded a best poster prize at the 12th Conference on Methods and Applications of Fluorescence: Spectroscopy, Imaging and Probes (MAF-12) held in Strasbourg, France, from 11 to 14 Sept., 2011. Amandine (pictured below with her certificate) was awarded a €200 book voucher for her poster entitled:  Quantification of amino acids and vitamins in cell culture media using Excitation-Emission Matrix fluorescence spectroscopy and chemometrics.  A. Calvet and A.G. Ryder. She was one of only 6 prize recipients from a total of 227 posters presented by PhD students, postdocs, and academic staff.
  
• May 11: The MolRec UREKA programme will begin in the next couple of weeks.  Two third year students, Rebecca Pigot and Michelle Kyne will be joining the lab for the summer to work on the spectroscopic analysis of complex bioprocess media.
• Feb. 11:  We have just started a new collaboration with Kaiser Optical Systems Inc. and are evaluating the application of their new RAMANRXN2™ 1000 analyzer system for biopharmaceutical applications. This is part of a wider collaboration with UCD, DCU, and NIBRT.
  
• Jan. 11: Our work on rapid cell culture media analysis has been featured in the January issue of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.  The article can be accessed here.
  
• Oct. 10: Paper of fluorescence analysis of polymers published in Macromolecules. 
• Sept. 10:  A new industrial collaboration with the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson began on the 1st of September.  The project, funded by J&J  and NIBRT is developing new methods for characterizing cell culture media. A press release is available to download from here.
  
• Summer 2010:  We have a new group of summer students joining us this year they include MSc students Denis Coffey and Caroline Golderick, and UREKA students Jonathon Donaghue and Ronan Fitzpatrick.
• Mar. 2010:  Congratulations to Dean St. Mart from NUIM, a postgrad in Dr. Jon Stephens group who has been selected to attend the 60th Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting in June. We are collaborating with Dean and John on the characterization of novel fluorophores which are synthesized in NUIM.
  

Our news archive page, has a detailed list of past events and activities.

The luminol video.(.wmv format).....from the 1st year class of 2010-11.

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Forthcoming conferences & meetings:

Amandine Calvet will be giving a presentation at this years Chemistry Colloquium in UL in June 2012.
We will be presenting some of our recent Bio-analytical research at Informa’s Biopharmaceutical Raw Materials conference in Cologne on 27-28 June 2012.

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Research activities:

The two key research areas are: 1). Process Analytical Technologies: and 2). Advanced Microscopy & Fluorescence. In both areas we focus on the development of novel spectroscopic methods of analysis and measurement using fluorescence and Raman spectroscopies. To do this we take several approaches: firstly, we design and build novel instrumentation so that we can analyse particular classes of samples (microscopic to macroscopic, time and frequency domains), then we conduct fundamental research in order to understand the photophysics and photochemistry of the systems being studied, and finally, we apply this knowledge into the development of measurement methodologies that can be utilised by researchers in the clinical, earth, life, and physical sciences. A detailed description of all our activities can be viewed here.

The group and the research work is very interdisciplinary in nature and involves and amalgamation of biology, chemistry, physics, information technology, and medicine. An Ollsceala article about the group can be downloaded from here.   There is also a piece in the Irish Emigrant online, about the project, it can be accessed here.   The Picture on the right shows Dr. Boyan Li at the upright FLIM-FCS system.

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LOCATION:

The NBL laboratories are located in the Physical Chemistry section (PAT/Chemometrics) of the Arts/Science block and in a microscopy laboratory downstairs in chemistry. An interactive campus map is available here.

This is R166 showing the confocal Raman, and the upright confocal FLIM. This lab is now home to 6 advanced microscopy systems including confocal, TIRF, and FLIM systems.	Another view of the lab. showing the inverted FLIM-FCS system used for live cell and protein-surface measurements..
This is the TIRF microscope in R166.	This is the physical chemistry lab showing UV-Vis, steady-state fluorescence and time-resolved systems on the right.  This lab is mainly used for PAT/Chemometrics research.
This view shows the small special purpose lab, it's configured at the moment for humidity and cryogenic fluorescence (lifetime & steady-state) measurements.	The spectroscopy equipment room is located in Physical Chemistry and contains the XRF, fluorescence steady-state (with multi-cell holder), and lifetime spectrometers, and the Perkin-Elmer Lambda 950 UV-Visible spectrometer (out of shot).

A word document with directions is available here.

Getting to Galway:  Detailed directions for getting to NUI-Galway are available here.
For detailed maps of Galway city and its environs, you should check out www.multimap.com
For the full campus directory (telephone/email/address), you can download an interactive pdf document here.

Biographical Information:

• Honorary President, Microscopical Society of Ireland, Aug. 2008 - 2010.
  
• Senior Lecturer, School. of Chemistry, NUI-Galway,. Aug. 2006 - present.
• Science Foundation Ireland Investigator, National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science, NUI-Galway. 2003-08. 
• Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Chemistry, NUI-Galway,. Sept. 2003 - July 2006.
• Research Scientist, NCLA/ Department of Physics, NUI-Galway, 1997 - July 2003.
• Post-doctoral researcher, Department of Chemistry, UCC, 1993-1995. 
• Ph.D. (Inorganic Chemistry) 1989-1994,  NUI- Galway. 
  
• B.Sc. Hons. ( Chemistry) 1985-1989, NUI-Galway.

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