Specialty: Biophotonics and Laser Technology

Supervisor: Marlan Scully

Research Focus
For the past several years, Dr. Fernández worked on the development of novel light sources – lasers – tailored for applications in bioimaging. Some of the concepts developed by Dr. Fernández have been translated into commercial products or have been apllied to solve similar problems in other types of laser sources. Light source development, is an important research tool, it can make the difference as to whether a measurement can be performed with or without causing damage to the biological system studied. It can determine whether a measurement needs to be performed in a lab or can be done in the field.

Dr. Fernández will be working on applications involving new Raman imaging techniques in plants and other problems in biophotonics together with Dr. Verhoef and also in Marlan Scully’s lab in the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering.

One focus will be combining multimodal imaging techniques to detect specific molecules, such as lipids and proteins, deep into tissue with a high specificity in animals and plants.