Advancing Laser Ablation Chemical Analysis
Rick Russo, the winner of the 2013 Lester W. Strock Award, is known for important advances in laser ablation for use in spectrochemical analysis. In a new interview, he talks about those developments, how his career developed, and what it's like, as a research scientist, to lead a start-up company.

Fluorescence Imaging: The First Demonstration of Far-Field, Subdiffraction Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging
Emily Smith and her coworkers in the Department of Chemistry at Iowa State University developed a stimulated emission depletion (STED) fluorescence microscope and used it to collect fluorescence lifetime images. With this approach, they were able to achieve a lateral spatial resolution of 40 nm, which is an eightfold improvement in lateral resolution compared with traditional far-field optical microscopy. This system has been used to measure the organization of integrin cell membrane proteins and the cellular factors that affect integrin rearrangement.

Developing a Miniaturized Atmospheric Pressure Glow Discharge Source for Atomic Spectroscopy and Desorption Ionization Mass Spectrometry
Ken Marcus and his group at Clemson University have developed a miniaturized liquid sampling atmospheric pressure glow discharge source. Originally designed for atomic spectroscopy, the source actually works for both elemental and organic mass spectrometry. It can operate in various types of solutions, from the acidic to the saline, without ion suppression, and is small and portable.

Vibrational Spectroscopic Imaging: Theory, Application, and Advances
Rohit Bhargava, the winner of the 2012 FACSS/SciX Innovation Award, explains new research into the theory of vibrational spectroscopic imaging that can lead to the development of instruments with new capability for both IR and Raman imaging, for use in various fields, including disease diagnosis.

Nanometer-Scale Studies Using Tip Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy
Volker Deckert, the winner of the 2013 Charles Mann Award, is advancing the use of tip enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) to push the lateral resolution of vibrational spectroscopy well below the Abbe limit, to achieve single-molecule sensitivity. Because the tip can be moved with sub-nanometer precision, structural information with unmatched spatial resolution can be achieved without the need of specific labels.

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