David Coucheron

«Waveguide-based Excitation for High-throughput Imaging»

 

Popular scientific abstract:

Fluorescence microscopy allows researchers to image biological samples that
normally are transparent under white light illumination. In a traditional microscope, light is delivered to the entire sample through a lens. This, however, create noise in the image from regions of the sample that are not of interest. One common solution is to use a specialized lens that only excited a thin portion of the sample with an evanescent field. Chip–based fluorescence
imaging is an emerging field where the same evanescent field is generated using photonic integrated circuits – a light based version of an electric circuit – rather the traditional lens. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how this approach to illumination can be of benefit.

Over the last decades, a new type of light microscopy has been developed – super-resolution optical microscopy. Researchers are now able to image the inner workings of cells using light microscopes, which was previously thought impossible. In the first part of this thesis I demonstrate how chip-based imaging can increase the field-of-view of super-resolution imaging by a factor 100 approximately. The second half of the thesis demonstrates how the same platform also can benefit other techniques, such as Raman spectroscopy and computational imaging.

 

The thesis is published in Munin and is available at: https://munin.uit.no/handle/10037/20695

 

Supervisors:

• Professor Balpreet Singh Ahluwalia, Department of Physics and Technology, UiT (main supervisor)
• Dr. Vijay Raj Singh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 

 

Evaluation committee:

• Professor Laura M. Lechuga, Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), CSIC, BIST and CIBER-BBN, Spain (1. Opponent)
• Professor Magnus Borstad Lilledahl, Department of Physics, NTNU (2. Opponent)
• Associate Professor Krishna Agarwal, Department of Physics and Technology, UiT (internal member and leader of the committee)

All members will participate remotely to the defence.

 

Leader of the public defense:
The leader of the public defense is Associate Professor Yngve Birkelund , Head of the Department of Physics and Technology, Faculty of Science and Technology, UiT.

 

Opposition ex auditorio:
If you have any questions for the candidate during the public defence, please send an e-mail to the leader of the public defence. They will announce the questions during the defence.

 

Trial lecture:

The trial lecture is held Wednesday March 24th at 10:15 digitally.

Title of the trial lecture: «Single Molecule Biosensing»

 

Streaming:

The defense and trial lecture will be streamed via Mediasite: 

https://mediasite.uit.no/Mediasite/Catalog/Full/ec912ffc93464e7d8a813d36b69c667221

 

Audience:

All audience are to use mediasite to view the defence.