In this SGER award, funded by the Experimental Physical Chemistry Program, Prof. Marcos Dantus of Michigan State University and his graduate and undergraduate student colleagues will conduct exploratory research in the attempt to develop the controlled fragmentation and detection of ionized biological species in the gas phase. They propose to do this through the use of shaped femtosecond laser pulses.
Prof. Dantus and his group will attempting to use shaped ultrafast laser pulses to selectively fragment large biological ions in the gas phase. The ultimate aim of these studies is to obtain structural information of large biomolecules with a programmable laser source. The major impact of this type of instrument would be in biological research. The graduate and undergraduate students working on this will receive stellar training in research that is at the interface of physical and biological science.
