Dr. Françisco M. Raymo directs the Laboratory for Molecular Photonics within the Department of Chemistry at the University of Miami. The laboratory is located in the Knight Physics Building of the Coral Gables Campus. Its mission is the development of photoresponsive chemical tools to solve problems of fundamental significance in the biological and physical sciences. Current research efforts are directed to the design, synthesis, characterization and testing of photoactivatable fluorophores for (1) the optical mapping of temperature distributions in three dimensions with micrometer resolution, (2) the investigation of the dynamic and structural factors regulating cellular processes at the molecular level, (3) the fabrication of microstructured lasers with tunable spectral output. All projects demand the chemical synthesis of fluorescent molecular constructs, the spectroscopic analysis of their photochemical and photophysical properties and the assessment of their performance with model fluorescence imaging experiments.
February 23, 2024