SciX 2025 Award Plenary to Spotlight Breakthroughs in Catalysis and Biomedical Imaging

On Sunday, October 5, 2025, at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington, Kentucky, the SciX Award Plenary will celebrate several individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the field of spectroscopy. During this award plenary, the Clara Craver Award will be presented to Prashant K. Jain, a G. L. Clark Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1). Spectroscopy will also present its 2025 Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award to Lingyan Shi, who is an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego (1).

Cincinnati, Ohio, USA | Image Credit: © SeanPavonePhoto - stock.adobe.com.

Highlighting the Clara Craver Award Recipient

Recently, Jain’s team developed an advanced nanoscale surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) technique that allows real-time monitoring of catalyst surface intermediates during CO₂ photoreduction on silver nanoparticles (2). This approach revealed detailed information on reaction intermediates, including rare multi-carbon products like butanol, highlighting complex C–C coupling mechanisms that are critical for designing more efficient catalysts (2).

As part of the plenary award presentation, Jain will deliver a talk covering his research. Jain’s will explore how visible-light excitation of plasmonic nanostructures enables catalytic reactions, such as CO₂ reduction on gold and silver nanoparticles, that do not occur in the dark. Using single-nanoparticle surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), researchers have observed single-molecule events during plasmon-driven catalysis (1). This approach has revealed key intermediates in ethylene oxidation, water oxidation, and CO₂ reduction, including a one-electron, one-proton species and multi-carbon intermediates involved in C–C coupling (1). These findings highlight the role of plasmonically generated electron–hole pairs in driving chemical transformations and demonstrate how vibrational spectroscopy provides powerful insights into light-to-chemical-energy conversion mechanisms.

Highlighting the Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy

A specialist in biomedical imaging, Shi has pioneered advances in vibrational spectroscopy and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy to study metabolism in cells and tissues with high chemical specificity. Her research integrates SRS with multiphoton fluorescence, fluorescence lifetime imaging, and second harmonic generation to create multimodal imaging platforms (3). Notably, Shi identified the “Golden Window” for deep-tissue imaging and developed deuterium-based metabolic labeling (DO-SRS) to track newly synthesized biomolecules. She has also advanced computational methods, including Adam optimization-based pointillism deconvolution (A-PoD) and penalized reference matching SRS (PRM-SRS), which enhance spatial resolution and multiplex chemical imaging (3). Shi’s interdisciplinary contributions span neuroscience, metabolism, and disease diagnostics, with key studies on lipid metabolism in Alzheimer’s disease, optical biopsies for kidney disease, and metabolic imaging in aging models (3). With over 3,800 citations, an h-index of 33, and publications in leading journals, Shi has quickly become a recognized innovator. Her work not only advances imaging technologies but also opens new avenues in disease mechanism discovery, biomarker development, and therapeutic monitoring.

Meanwhile, Shi’s talk will focus on label-free multiplex molecular imaging, with a focus on the metabolic dynamics at subcellular resolution (1). Shi will present a multimodal metabolic nanoscopy platform that integrates DO-SRS, SRS, MPF, FLIM, and SHG to achieve label-free, subcellular imaging of metabolism (1). By using deuterated metabolic probes, the system detects carbon–deuterium bonds in the Raman-silent region, allowing precise visualization of newly synthesized biomolecules (1). This approach reveals metabolic heterogeneity across cell types and tissues in health and disease. A key finding shows that tau protein overexpression in Alzheimer’s brains disrupts lipid metabolism, causing abnormal lipid droplet accumulation in glial cells, reversible by AMPK activation (1). The platform offers transformative applications in disease mechanism studies, biomarker discovery, drug development, and therapy monitoring.

References

1. FACSS, 2025 Final Program. SciX Conference. Available at: https://scixconference.org/2025-final-program (accessed 2025-09-15).
2. Chasse, J. SERS-Based Nanoscale Insights into Surface Chemistry of CO₂ Photoreduction: An Interview with 2025 Clara Craver Award Winner Prashant Jain. Spectroscopy. Available at: https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/sers-based-nanoscale-insights-into-surface-chemistry-of-co-photoreduction-an-interview-with-2025-clara-craver-award-winner-prashant-jain (accessed 2025-09-15).
3. Workman, Jr., J. The 2025 Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy: Lingyan Shi of the University of California, San Diego. Spectroscopy. Available at: https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/the-2025-emerging-leader-in-molecular-spectroscopy-lingyan-shi-of-the-university-of-california-san-diego (accessed 2025-09-15).