Gardner's group develops infrared and Raman microspectroscopy for biomedical diagnostics and disease sensing. Research directions: (1) FTIR synchrotron microspectroscopy — using Diamond Light Source synchrotron IR beam for high-spatial-resolution chemical mapping of biological tissues for cancer diagnosis; (2) Raman microspectroscopy — label-free chemical imaging of cells and tissue for disease classification using machine-learning chemometrics; (3) SERS probes — developing gold nanoparticle SERS labels for targeted cancer biomarker detection; (4) Breathomics — on-chip photonic sensors for exhaled breath analysis for early disease detection. The infrared and Raman methods provide label-free molecular sensing with potential for quantum-enhanced sensitivity.

Imamoglu leads the Quantum Photonics Group at ETH, working at the intersection of quantum optics and condensed matter physics. Research directions: (1) Quantum emitters in 2D semiconductors — TMD monolayers (MoSe2, WSe2) host localized excitons that act as single-photon emitters; electrically tunable quantum dots in TMD heterostructures with high purity and spin-photon entanglement; developing them as quantum sensors of local electronic correlations at nanometer scales; (2) Strongly correlated electron physics — Mott insulator / Wigner crystal phases in moiré TMD bilayers probed optically with single-photon resolution; mapping electronic phases with nanometer spatial resolution; (3) Polariton quantum fluids — exciton-polaritons in 2D semiconductor microcavities; (4) Quantum nonlinear optics — photon-photon interactions via giant Kerr nonlinearities in strongly coupled quantum dots. Quantum sensing angle: quantum emitters as nanoscale probes of correlated phases.