"Exploiting Quantum Entanglement for Optomechanical Sensors"

Zheshen Zhang - Quantum Engineering Lab, University of Michigan

In optomechanical sensing, mechanical oscillators respond to external forces, magnetic and acoustic signals, while optical probes read out the motion of mechanical oscillators to infer the external signal. Researchers can use an array of optomechanical sensors to scale up measurement performance, but the measurement precision of optomechanical sensors is fundamentally limited by the measurement noise arising from quantum fluctuations of the probe light and mechanical oscillators.

Zhang’s team is currently working on integrated quantum chips for entanglement-enhanced sensing. Assembling all of these components on-chip will eliminate the need for optical alignment and make the sensors much more stable—and overcome the two main challenges of their current experiment.

Zhang’s talk on quantum sensing will cover some of the fundamental concepts and their recent research in this area.

Sponsored By:

Zheshen Zhang

"Femtosecond Writing Enables Cellphone Spectroscopy"

Dr. Jean-Sebastien Boisvert, Polytechnique Montreal, Electrical Engineering Dept.

A new Fs laser writing regime without heat accumulation enables the use of a smartphone to expand the potential spectroscopy application growth. The process creates a spectrometer capable of covering the visible band from 401 to 700 nm with a 0.4 nm/pixel detector resolution and 3 nm optical resolution. The proof of concept paves the way to in-the-field absorption spectroscopy for quick information gathering. The keynote speaker, Jean-Sébastien Boisvert, will discuss the research process, potential next steps, and the remaining challenges.  

Sponsored By:

Dr. Jean-Sebastien Boisvert

"Virtual Staining of Label-free Tissue Using Deep Learning"

Aydogan Ozcan Ph.D. - Chancellor’s Professor and the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Innovation at UCLA and an HHMI Professor with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Deep learning techniques create new opportunities to revolutionize tissue staining methods by digitally generating histological stains using trained neural networks, providing rapid, cost-effective, accurate and environmentally friendly alternatives to standard chemical staining methods. These deep learning-based virtual staining techniques can successfully generate different types of histological stains, including immunohistochemical stains, from label-free microscopic images of unstained samples by using, e.g., autofluorescence microscopy, quantitative phase imaging (QPI) and reflectance confocal microscopy. Similar approaches were also demonstrated for transforming images of an already stained tissue sample into another type of stain, performing virtual stain-to-stain transformations. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of our recent work on the use of deep neural networks for label-free tissue staining, also covering their biomedical applications.

Sponsored By:

Aydogan Ozcan Ph.D. 

"Measuring Single Photons with Superconducting Nanowire Detectors"

Ioana Craiciu - Experimental physicist, NASA JPL

Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) are excellent detectors for light from the UV to the mid-IR. These cryogenically cooled detectors can measure individual particles of light with high system detection efficiency (the record is over 99%), picosecond-level timing resolution and sub-hertz dark counts. I will describe recent technological developments in SNSPDs including operation in the mid-IR range, kilo-pixel detector arrays, and photon number resolution. These advances mean that SNSPDs are being used in an increasing number of applications including deep space optical communication, quantum information, dark matter searches, biomedical imaging, and astrobiology.

Sponsored By:

Ioana Craiciu