Low-cost optical sensing for healthcare

Professor Jeremy J Baumberg FRSC FRS is the Harald Aspden Professor of Fundamental Physics at the University of Cambridge, directing a key UK NanoPhotonics Centre. He develops optical materials structured on the nanoscale, with strong experience at Hitachi, IBM, and his spin-offs combining academic insight with translation. He is a leading innovator in Nano (h-120), leading to awards including the IoP Faraday gold Medal (2017) and Royal Society Rumford Medal (2014). He is currently chair of the UK EPSRC Council. His recent popular science book “The Secret Life of Science: How Science Really Works and Why it Matters” focusses on research culture. (https:\\np.phy.cam.ac.uk).

Jean-François Masson is full professor of Chemistry and head of the Department of chemistry at the Université de Montréal. His laboratory develops new plasmonic materials, instruments, and surface chemistry for the detection of broad range of molecules directly in crude samples, which are then translated to functional sensors for a series of biological, environmental and industrial applications. He has published more than 150 research articles and his research has led to filing more than 10 patents on various instrumental, materials or surface chemistry innovations for biosensing. In 2015, he co-founded Affinité Instruments, a Canadian start-up company commercializing surface plasmon resonance (SPR) instrumentation. Jean-François received several awards including the McBryde Medal of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, and an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, Germany for research at the Max-Planck Institute. In 2017, he was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry – UK.

Ashim Dhakal is the Managing Director and Head of the Biophotonics Lab at Phutung Research Institute in Nepal. He earned an Erasmus Mundus MSc in Photonics Engineering across a consortium of European and UK universities, followed by a PhD in Photonics Engineering from Ghent University – imec. Dr Dhakal is a co-inventor of nanophotonic waveguide-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, a foundational technology leveraging evanescent fields for high-sensitivity spectroscopy that is now widely pursued by research groups and commercial startups globally for photonic integrated circuit (PIC) based Raman sensing. Driven by the conviction that science, technology, and innovation are the cornerstones of social development, he returned to Nepal to establish Phutung Research Institute as a hub for advanced research. His expertise spans advanced spectroscopy, silicon/silicon nitride integrated photonics, and optical coherence tomography. A Royal Academy of Engineering International Associate (2024), his work has been recognised through numerous awards and invited/keynote presentations at flagship international conferences, including CLEO and SPIE Photonics West.

Pedro Estrela is Professor of Biosensors and Bioelectronics at the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering and Director of the Centre for Bioengineering & Biomedical Technologies (CBio), University of Bath. He has a background in Physics (degree and Masters from the University of Lisbon, PhD from the University of Amsterdam) and started working in the field of biosensors in 2000 (University of Cambridge until 2008 and University of Bath since 2008). He is Co-Director of the Research England funded Centre of Excellence in Water-Based Early-Warning Systems for Health Protection, Co-Director of the NERC CDT in Real-Time Digital Water-Based Systems for Environmental Health Protection, and member of the Steering Committee of the Consortium for Precision Health.

Professor Estrela’s research focuses on the development of label-free electrical, electrochemical and plasmonic biosensors and lab-on-chip devices for a wide range of applications such as medical diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring as well as water/wastewater monitoring. He is an Associate Editor for Biosensors & Bioelectronics and other journals and Specialty Chief Editor in Frontiers in Lab on a Chip Technologies.

Zachary D Schultz PhD, is a professor in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The Ohio State University. Professor Schultz earned his BS degree from the Ohio State University (2000) and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2005). Following postdoctoral studies at NIST (USA) and the NIH (USA), he began his independent career at the University of Notre Dame (2009). Professor Schultz moved to the Ohio State University in 2018. Professor Schultz has been recognised as a Cottrell Scholar (2013), as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2019, with the Craver Award for applied vibrational spectroscopy from the Coblentz Society (2021), and as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2024). Professor Schultz is an associated editor for ACS Sensors. Professor Schultz’s research focuses on using spectroscopy for label-free imaging and ultrasensitive detection.

Jennifer (Jen) Dionne is a Professor of Materials Science and, by courtesy, of Radiology at Stanford. She is also deputy director of Q-NEXT (a DOE-funded National Quantum Initiative), a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, and co-founder of Pumpkinseed, the "Biology Mining Company". Jen received her BS degrees in Physics and Systems Science and Mathematics from Washington University in St Louis, her PhD in Applied Physics at Caltech, and her postdoctoral training in Chemistry at Berkeley. As a pioneer of nanophotonics, she is passionate about developing novel methods to detect and direct biochemical transformations, emphasizing critical challenges in global health and sustainability. Her lab has demonstrated how AI-enabled Raman spectroscopy can be used to identify pathogens and predict their antibiotic resistance; and to monitor drug susceptibility of melanoma. She also forged new ground in developing in vivo tools for mechanobiology. Finally, she has pioneered environmental transmission electron microscopy, providing atomic-scale insights that enable catalysts for sustainable chemical manufacturing. Her work has been recognized with the NSF Waterman Award, a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Moore Inventor Fellowship, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and was featured on Oprah’s list of “50 Things that will make you say ‘Wow’”.