Gureyev is one of the originators of propagation-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging and the transport-of-intensity phase-retrieval methods that made it practical; his current work concerns the information-theoretic limits of imaging — how signal-to-noise, spatial resolution and radiation dose trade against one another — and the application of those limits to phase-contrast tomography, ptychography and electron microscopy, including biomedical imaging at clinically tolerable dose. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the shared intellectual core is the noise-resolution-dose triangle: the same estimation-theory framework that sets the pT/sqrt(Hz) floor of an NV ensemble governs how many photons a phase-contrast image needs. Borderline inclusion (X-ray rather than quantum sensing), kept because the technique is explicitly about pushing resolution past conventional limits.
Ham's group builds CMOS integrated-circuit platforms spanning scalable, chip-based NMR spectrometers (including impedance-tuned microwave loops for controlling dense NV-diamond spin ensembles, developed with Ronald Walsworth) and CMOS intracellular microelectrode arrays that record from thousands of neurons in parallel — a dual quantum-sensing/bioelectronic-sensing program built around scaling sensitive spin- and electrode-based sensors onto integrated circuits.
Develops microfluidics and imaging-based spatial-omics technologies for high-resolution, high-throughput assays and modeling of complex biological systems, including bottom-up construction of synthetic cells.
The Han Lab (Chemistry, joined fall 2023) develops quantum sensing tools rooted in electron and nuclear spin physics for life-science applications. Directions: (1) DNP-enhanced NMR quantum sensing using coupled electron-nuclear spin clusters — designing novel biradical and multi-spin systems achieving 700-fold ¹³C signal enhancement at 14.1 T via P1 center clusters in HPHT diamond (exchange coupling >100 MHz); aiming for in-cell NMR with sensitivity to track water dynamics in a single cell; (2) High-field pulsed EPR at 240 GHz / 8.6 T: time-resolved Gd-Gd EPR (TiGGER) for tracking inter-residue distances during protein functional cycles in solution with sub-nm resolution; rapid-scan field-domain EPR development; (3) Integration of DNP/EPR with nanodiamond-based quantum sensors: coupled electron-nuclear spin cluster design for long-range quantum sensing in biological environments, bridging conventional NMR/EPR and NV-center-based quantum sensing. Han directs the EPR/DNP component of IMSERC (Northwestern's core facility) and brought three new EPR spectrometers and a 600 MHz DNP-NMR system.
Hau is renowned for slowing light to bicycle speed and then stopping and coherently storing optical pulses in a Bose-Einstein condensate via electromagnetically induced transparency; her current program extends this quantum-optics platform to couple light-driven photosynthetic proteins with engineered nanostructures, bridging fundamental photon physics and biophysics.
Thomas Heimburg (Professor, NBI Membranes group) works on thermodynamics and biophysics of biological membranes. Research: (1) theory of nerve pulse propagation as electromechanical solitons ('soliton model'); (2) lipid membrane phase transitions — calorimetry, DSC, AFM; (3) anesthesia mechanism via membrane phase perturbation; (4) ion-channel-like events in pure lipid membranes near phase transitions. Notably co-authored 2016 Scientific Reports paper with QUANTOP (Jensen et al.) demonstrating non-invasive detection of nerve impulses using atomic magnetometry — direct overlap with quantum sensing.
Hinde is a fluorescence-fluctuation physicist embedded in cell biology: she uses pair-correlation function analysis, number-and-brightness, phasor-FLIM and FRET to read out chromatin compaction, protein-chromatin binding dynamics and nucleocytoplasmic transport in living nuclei, at spatial and temporal scales that conventional imaging averages away. The programme is a technique-pushing one — the emphasis is on extracting nanoscale structural information from photon statistics rather than on brute-force localisation — and it is now being coupled to quantum sensing through her QUBIC investigatorship, where the goal is to combine fluorescence readouts with NV-based magnetic and spin-noise contrast in the same cell. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — her role in QUBIC is to supply the cell-biological questions and the correlative optical readouts that make pT/sqrt(Hz)-class ensemble sensing biologically interpretable. Preferred attribute present: lifetime- and orientation-resolved methods pushing past the usual resolution limits.
Hoogenboom leads a biophysics group at UCL specializing in high-speed atomic force microscopy. Research directions: (1) High-speed AFM — imaging conformational dynamics of DNA, proteins (including membrane channels), and chromatin at ms time resolution and sub-nm spatial resolution in aqueous conditions; (2) Nuclear pore complex — mapping transport selectivity and structure of NPCs in native nuclear envelopes using AFM; (3) Antimicrobial mechanisms — imaging membrane disruption by antimicrobial peptides in real time; (4) AFM-based force spectroscopy — measuring single-molecule interaction forces in chromatin and protein assemblies. Strong relevance to biological sensing at the single-molecule level.
Jacob Hoogenboom develops integrated correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) and molecular nanophotonic imaging. Research: (1) 3-in-1 microscopy combining light, electron beam, and ion beam for precise biological sample sectioning and protein localisation; (2) integrated CLEM for mapping proteins in cellular context; (3) single-molecule nanophotonic sensing using fluorescence. Relevant to advanced single-molecule biosensing approaches.
Hutchison works on molecular polaritonics: what happens to chemistry when molecular electronic or vibrational transitions are strongly coupled to a confined optical mode in a Fabry-Perot or plasmonic nanocavity. He was among the first to show that vibrational strong coupling modifies ground-state chemical reactivity, and the group continues to probe polariton-modified energy transfer, photochemistry and transport, alongside single-molecule spectroscopy and 2D-material photonics. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the connection to quantum sensing is the cavity: the same Purcell and collective-coupling physics that concentrates optical density of states around a molecule is what is used to improve photon collection and readout fidelity in NV ensembles operating at pT/sqrt(Hz). This is fundamental light-matter physics with a clear nonclassical-state angle.