Abstract: Optical tweezers (optical traps) have enjoyed their greatest utility in the emerging field of single-molecule biophysics, where they're being used to study the nanoscale properties of individual biological macromolecules. This talk will discuss recent progress.
Biography: Steven M. Block is a professor at Stanford University with a joint appointment in the departments of biological sciences and applied physics. In addition, he is a member of the scientific advisory group JASON, a senior fellow of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and an amateur bluegrass musician.
Block received his BA and MA from Oxford University. He has been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences (2007) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000), and is a winner of the Max Delbruck Prize of the American Physical Society (2008), as well as the Single Molecule Biophysics Prize of the Biophysical Society (2007). He served as President of the Biophysical Society during 2005–2006. His graduate work was completed in the laboratory of Howard Berg at the University of Colorado and Caltech. He received his PhD in 1983 and went on to do postdoctoral research at Stanford. Since that time, Block held positions at the Rowland Institute for Science, Harvard University, and Princeton University before returning to Stanford in 1999.
Block has researched the many threats associated with bioterrorism and headed influential studies on how advances in genetic engineering have impacted biological warfare.
Work in his lab has led to the direct observation of the 8-m steps taken by kinesin and the demonstration that these steps consume as fuel only a single molecule of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), up to applied loads on the motor enzyme of several picoNewtons (pN). |
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Abstract: Contemporary information technology relies on classical physics, utilizing electronic charge for computation and magnetic materials for storage. We describe recent optoelectronic experiments with single electron spins in diamond that may enable fundamentally different quantum-based information technologies.
Biography: David Awschalom obtained a BSc in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a PhD in physics from Cornell University. After serving as a research staff member and manager of the nonequilibrium physics group at the IBM Watson Research Center, he joined the University of California-Santa Barbara as a professor of physics, electrical and computer engineering. He is presently the Peter J. Clarke Professor and director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and Director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation. His group has research activities in optical and magnetic interactions in semiconductor quantum structures, spin dynamics and coherence in condensed matter systems, and implementations of quantum information processing in the solid state. He has developed a variety of femtosecond-resolved spatiotemporal spectroscopies and micromagnetic sensing techniques aimed at exploring charge and spin motion in the quantum domain. Awschalom received an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award, the Outstanding Investigator Prize of the Materials Research Society, the International Magnetism Prize and Néel Medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society, the Europhysics Prize of the European Physical Society, and the Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Awschalom is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. |