Congratulations to QMSI’s Prof. Paul Stevenson (Physics) on his new NIH MIRA grant “Quantum sensor-enabled nanoscale magnetic resonance”.
This award will support the development of biocompatible quantum sensing tools to explore biomolecular dynamics at the nanoscale, providing new, quantum-enabled, approaches to single-molecule biophysics.
More specifically, the objective of this proposal is to develop novel strategies for integrating these quantum sensors (the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond) with proteins and biomembranes. Prof. Stevenson’s innovation is a suite of experimental strategies to improve the sensor compatibility with biological systems, ranging from minimizing photodamage using a total internal reflection geometry, to localizing targets at the sensor surface with supported lipid bilayer formation.