King develops polarization- and time-resolved PEEM together with ultrafast (scanning) transmission electron microscopy to image charge-carrier, exciton, and phonon dynamics with nanoscale (down to ~25 nm) spatial resolution at buried interfaces and in 2D materials such as black phosphorus. Her group is now retrofitting a high-throughput PEEM, in collaboration with the Kasthuri lab, for whole-brain connectomics -- an unpreferred/borderline inclusion since the core program is materials-science imaging rather than biosensing, but one that is directly extending resolution-pushing microscopy into neuroscience.
Lakhwani runs the Molecular Photophysics Group and is a chief investigator in ARC Exciton Science. The group works on strong light-matter coupling in organic semiconductors: forming exciton-polaritons in microcavities, driving them toward polariton lasing and condensation with electrically injected devices, and engineering host-guest energy funnelling to lower thresholds. A second thread is chiroptical spectroscopy — circular dichroism and circularly polarised luminescence of chiral organic films — which is a polarisation-resolved measurement of a very small differential signal. 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 — polaritonic quantum matter is a distinct route to non-classical states of light at room temperature, in contrast to the cryogenic or spin-based platforms that dominate pT/sqrt(Hz)-class sensing; the differential chiroptical measurements the group performs are, methodologically, small-signal detection problems of exactly the same type.
Develops single-molecule spectroscopy and imaging/signal-processing methods to study protein dynamics at interfaces and predictive separations.
Leone's group generates attosecond and few-femtosecond XUV/X-ray pulses to track electron dynamics and charge migration in molecules and materials in real time, pushing time-domain spectroscopy toward the natural timescale of electronic motion.
Studies photophysics and photochemistry of plasmonic nanomaterials using single-particle optical imaging and ultrafast spectroscopy, with applications to solar energy conversion.
Liu's group sits at the junction of DNA nanotechnology and nanophotonics: DNA-origami-templated plasmonic assemblies, reconfigurable artificial nanomachines whose motion is read out optically (chiral plasmonics, FRET), and, increasingly, synthetic-cell systems -- DNA-based pores and a programmable DNA-origami nanosyringe for directed membrane translocation, the latter published jointly with Nussberger's biophysics group at Stuttgart. The through-line is building nanoscale machines that both actuate and report. Relative to the established NV-ensemble quantum-sensing playbook (DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry at pT/sqrt(Hz) ensemble sensitivity), the relevance is on the biosensing axis: this is the group that can put a nanoscale probe exactly where you want it on or through a membrane, which is the delivery problem that in-cell quantum sensing keeps running into. Preferred-attribute note: nanofabrication is heavily used, but the emphasis is on single-molecule optical readout rather than device manufacture per se.
Maier's group works on nanophotonics and plasmonics, including metasurfaces, 2D-material photonics and plasmon-enhanced sensing, exploiting sub-wavelength light confinement for sensing and light-matter interaction applications.
McCamey is, for a candidate coming from NV ensemble sensing, the single most methodologically adjacent PI at UNSW. His laboratory does optically and electrically detected magnetic resonance on spins that are not defects in diamond: photogenerated spin-correlated radical pairs, triplet excitons in organic semiconductors, singlet-fission intermediates, and molecular spin systems. The instrumentation is the same toolkit — pulsed EPR, ODMR, dynamical decoupling, relaxometry — applied to systems where the spin is created by light and reports on chemistry. He directs the UNSW node of ARC Exciton Science. 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 — his group runs precisely those pulse sequences (Hahn echo, DEER, relaxometry) on a different spin species, and radical-pair spin chemistry is one of the few plausible mechanisms by which biology could be genuinely quantum — which makes this a strong landing spot for someone wanting to keep the NV skill set but change the physical system. Preferred attributes present: sensitivity-limited spin measurement, quantum-biology relevance.
Metivier (PPSM) studies photochromic and fluorescent molecules at the single-molecule level - photoswitching kinetics, energy transfer and orientation-resolved imaging - underpinning super-resolution (RESOLFT/STORM-type) probes and molecular sensors. In the broader landscape of NV-centre ensemble quantum sensing (DEER, nano-NMR, T1 relaxometry) operating near pT/sqrt(Hz) sensitivity, this work is paralleled by molecular photoswitches enabling optical super-resolution.
Nobel laureate W. E. Moerner, who first detected and studied single molecules optically, now develops engineered point-spread-function and orientation-resolved single-molecule localization microscopy methods to track individual biomolecules and their rotational dynamics in cells with nanometer precision, well beyond the optical diffraction limit.