Research interests
Our research focuses on using surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to create new approaches to bioanalysis for use in the life and clinical sciences. SERS is a spectroscopic technique that offers significant advantages over other established techniques such as fluorescence and our research has focused on highlighting the advantages, creating new examples of increased capability in life science applications and interacting with end users to shape future step changes in research. Our research centres around using the inherent sensitivity of SERS for the detection of target DNA or proteins using signal amplification methods to enhance the signal rather than using target amplification methods such as PCR. Our work has focussed on exploiting the sensitivity of SERS for quantitative analysis of biomolecules as well as exploiting one of the key advantages of SERS, the ability to analyse multiple analytes in one sample. This allows more information to be gained per analysis as well as giving information about complex systems that are intrinsically difficult to measure.
Professional activities
- Analytical Chemistry (Journal)
- Advisory Board Member
- 2018
- International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy (ICORS)
- Keynote/plenary speaker
- 8/2018
- PhD Viva Dundee
- Examiner
- 5/2018
- Spring SciX
- Organiser
- 3/2018
- BBSRC (Biotech & Biological Sciences Research Council) (External organisation)
- Member
- 3/2018
- 8th Chemical Nanoscience Symposium
- Invited speaker
- 3/2018
more professional activities
Projects
- Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP 2016-2017 University of Strathclyde) | Hislop, Ewan
- Edrada-Ebel, Ruangelie (Principal Investigator) Graham, Duncan (Principal Investigator) Faulds, Karen (Co-investigator) Young, Louise (Co-investigator) Hislop, Ewan (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 01-Jan-2022
- EPSRC i-sense IRC: Ultra-Sensitive Enhanced NanoSensing of Anti-Microbial Resistance (u-Sense)
- Graham, Duncan (Principal Investigator) Faulds, Karen (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 31-Jan-2022
- Catching Nucleation in Action with Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy
- Johnston, Karen (Principal Investigator) Faulds, Karen (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 01-Jan-2019
- Optical Detection of Listeria in the Chilled Food Environment using Bionanosensors (Industrial Partnership Award)
- Faulds, Karen (Principal Investigator) Graham, Duncan (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 28-Jan-2021
- Optical Detection of Listeria in the Chilled Food Environment using Bionanosensors (Industrial Partnership Award) / R170553-1
- Faulds, Karen (Principal Investigator) Graham, Duncan (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 28-Jan-2021
- A new tool for bioimaging based on super resolution Raman microscopy
- Graham, Duncan (Principal Investigator) Faulds, Karen (Co-investigator) Marshall, Stephen (Co-investigator)
- Raman microscopy is a technique which interacts laser light of a particular wavelength with a target sample resulting in this light being scattered by the sample, the changes in energy of the scattered light is then measured. These changes in energy relate to vibrations from different molecules and produce a vibrational fingerprint of the sample relating to the molecular composition. When conducted using a microscope and a stage which moves, multiple Raman spectra in 2 and 3 dimensions can be acquired to produce an image of the sample based on the intensity and the location of particular vibrations within the sample. This is referred to as a Raman map and is very often a false colour map laid on top of a standard magnified microscope image of the sample, a white light image, e.g. a heat map of intensity of say a protein vibration overlaid on the image of a cell. Conventional Raman microscopy is normally in a confocal mode which means that the highest resolution in spatial terms is half the wavelength of the excitation light so typically around 250 nm. Biological structures and processes are on a much smaller scale and this is a limitation of Raman spectroscopy. An advantage of Raman spectroscopy is that it is label free and reliant on the specific molecular vibrations from the molecules in the interrogation volume, unlike fluorescence microscopy, which is the most commonly used form of optical microscopy in life sciences. However fluorescence microscopy requires addition of a label to the sample which changes the sample composition and can affect the intrinsic biological processes of a biological system. This proposal will produce a new tool to acquire Raman maps and then process the data to enhance the spatial resolution possible from a Raman confocal microscope. We propose to generate sub 100 nm spatial resolution using this tool which will greatly transform the use of Raman spectroscopy and microscopy in the life sciences. This tool will require no addition of labels or hardware modifications to existing Raman microscope instruments.
- 20-Jan-2017 - 19-Jan-2019
more projects
Address
Pure and Applied Chemistry
Technology Innovation Centre
Technology Innovation Centre
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