Molecular sensing with supercontinuum radiation
Speaker: Prof. Clemens Kaminski, Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, University of Cambridge
Date: 18 May 2011
Time: 2pm
Venue: B46, Lecture theatre B
Abstract:
Supercontinuum radiation sources are becoming ubiquitous in a large range of scientific applications. They offer enormous spectral bandwidth and high brightness - ideal attributes for applications in molecular sensing, improving both speed and sensitivity of detection. There are challenges too, however: supercontinuum generation is an inherently noisy process and some wavelength regions of interest for molecular sensing are as of yet difficult to reach. In the talk current applications of sensing with supercontinuum radiation are reviewed and current challenges and future opportunities are discussed.
Biography:
Kaminski obtained his PhD in 1995 from Oxford University where he worked on the development of non linear laser techniques for the study of plasmas and flames. For his PhD work he was awarded a research fellowship by Keble college Oxford, and the Legerlotz foundation research prize.
In 1995 he moved to Marcus Aldén's group at the Lund Institute of Technology (Sweden), where he held an EU Marie Curie fellowship and later an Associate Professorship in Engineering Physics. At Lund he pioneered techniques for the time resolved study of fast chemical processes and began extension of these techniques towards biological applications, building the foundations for the Laser Analytics group's current research portfolio.
He was appointed to his current position at Cambridge University in 2001.
He won the Cyril Hinshelwood Prize in 2004, the Gaydon Award in 2004, and the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2005. In 2008 he obtained the SAOT research prize from the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen and Nuremberg, Germany for his contributions in applied optics research. He holds a guest professorship at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light at Erlangen, Germany.