PME Distinguished Colloquium Seminar - Jennifer Dionne, Stanford University

Exploring Light and Life: Nanophotonics and AI for Scalable Molecular Sensing, Sequencing, and Synthesis

The earth’s biosphere is incredibly information-rich, with estimated information transmission rates exceeding those of the technosphere by 9 orders of magnitude (Lingam et al, Life 13, 1850, 2023). Yet, current methods to extract this information are slow and laborious, hindering our ability to understand the genesis and evolution of biochemical systems, and to optimize their performance. Here, we present nanophotonic methods that may enable unprecedented data about biochemical systems, at rates previously unattainable. First, we describe our lab’s Si-photonic “Very-large-scale Integrated high-Q Nanophotonic Pixels” (VINPix).  These photonic resonators achieve high-Q factors, subwavelength mode volumes, and controlled dipole-like radiation, simultaneously, with Q-factors from the thousands to millions, and resonator densities exceeding 100M/cm2. By combining VINPix arrays with acoustic bioprinting for local chemical functionalization, we develop Si chips and the associated AI framework that detect multi-omic signatures on the same platform.