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.

Timon Idema (Associate Professor, BioNanoscience) develops theoretical models of cell biophysics. Research: (1) membrane shape theory — analytical and computational models of membrane curvature, budding, and fission driven by proteins; (2) cytoskeletal self-organisation — theoretical description of how microtubules and actin form functional structures during cell division; (3) synthetic cell theory — physical constraints and design principles for minimal cells. Collaborates closely with Dogterom and Koenderink labs on comparing theory with single-molecule experiments.

Ivanov works on nanotechnology-enabled biosensors and biophysical measurement platforms, including nanopore and microfluidic devices for single-molecule and single-particle biosensing.

Prof. Jacobsen's group develops novel methods, instruments, and analysis approaches for X-ray nanoscale imaging and applies them to biology and environmental science, using the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne. Directions: (1) Scanning X-ray fluorescence microscopy (SXFM) for organ-wide and nanoscale elemental mapping of metals (zinc, copper, iron) in biological tissues — central to the NIH-funded QE-Map national resource; imaging how metals regulate cellular functions, synaptic zinc signaling, and neurodegenerative disease; (2) X-ray ptychography and coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) for nanoscale biological imaging beyond the diffraction limit with improved dose efficiency; (3) Development of new algorithms, optics (zone plates), and detector systems to push spatial resolution and dose efficiency in X-ray microscopy — including lensless imaging methods and compressed-sensing reconstruction. Joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne Distinguished Fellow); also involved in QE-Map resource with Kozorovitskiy and Hao Zhang (McCormick).