Applied Optical Sensing and Spectroscopy

My research is focused on laser-based optical spectroscopy in life and environmental sciences covering fundamental as well as applied aspects. The experimental techniques used are steady state and time-resolved absorption as well as emission spectroscopy with high spectral  and high time  resolution(sub-nm and fs to ms, respectively). In addition to molecular probes like organic dyes, lanthanide and actinide ions are major optical probes, in which my group has a long standing history. The luminescence of lanthanides (Ln) and actinides (An) is used for speciation in environmental and biosensing context (e.g., investigations in the context of repository safety for nuclear waste or in the development of novel immunoassays for clinical diagnostics). For biosensing and speciation frequency down- and upconversion approaches are applied, e.g., investigation of metal (Ln, An) incorporation in proteins or organisms such as algae (by frequency down conversion) and in the development of novel biosensing schemes using lanthanide-based frequency upconversion nanoparticles.