Detection of ultraviolet (UV) light with high single-photon efficiency is required in many fields, from dark matter experiments to astronomical surveys, and even air pollution monitoring. Traditional detection techniques are based on the use of photo-multiplier tubes, which have typical single-photon efficiency of 20-25% for wavelengths λ < 300 nm, and are susceptible to thermal...
The era of Big Data has opened a new chapter in various fields of science, medicine, and business by allowing knowledge to be extracted from vast quantities of collected data, which has never been possible before. In High Energy Physics, the discovery of the Higgs boson would not have been possible without a carefully designed...
Annually 31.5 million people develop sepsis, a life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. Approximately 5.3 million people die yearly due to sepsis, among them 420,000 neonates. The majority of epidemiological studies on sepsis, or blood stream infections, focus either on bacteria or fungi and combined analyses are sparse. A global...
Safe environmental conditions and environmental monitoring have great importance in our life. The early detection of dangerous events, such as earthquakes, large-scale fires, appearing of poisoning or flammable gases, water and soil pollutions are critical to prevent oncoming cataclysms. Here we propose an integrated smart device that can be part of a network, capable to detect any...
Osteoarticular diseases are the most prevalent chronic pains and long-term disabilities with hundreds of millions people affected worldwide. They represent a major socioeconomic burden: a recent study estimated that the cost of arthritis, in industrialised countries, is ranging from 1% up to 2.5% of Gross National Product. Until now there is a lack of imaging...
This project is about a new and innovative screening technology called “iSLICE” (immuno Spot Layer Imaging of Cell Excretions) developed by InterFluidics at the Medical Cell BioPhysics group (MCBP) at the University of Twente and applies chip array and 3D-imaging technology. In iSLICE, a relevant panel of different secreted molecules will be detected as cytokines, interleukins, endocrines,...
Life is more than the sum of its constituent molecules. It is dependent on the way these molecules interact and cooperate with each other, i.e., the way they are organised in self-sustaining chemical reaction networks. Understanding the general chemical organisation underlying living systems, and even more so the ability to have such systems emerge and evolve...
Diagnosis of epilepsy critically depends on electroencephalography (EEG) machines and specialists trained to manually characterise the acquired brain signals. Clinical-grade EEG machines are immobile, expensive, and rely on dedicated recording rooms where background noise and distractions are minimised and data is stored on servers. Globally, most people with epilepsy live in rural resource-poor areas where these diagnostic...
Microalgae biomass has a strong potential as alternative, 3rd generation non crop-based biofuel. Biofuel production from microalgal biomass also directly tackles the paramount problem of climate change: fuel produced from carbon fixation from atmosphere drastically cuts the CO2 footprint of energy production. The efforts to face scarcity of resources and climate change is even more important in the...
In the electromagnetic spectrum just between the microwaves that we use in our WiFi and Bluetooth devices and the infrared light there is a mostly unexplored region, named the TeraHertz (THz) gap, consisting of electromagnetic (EM) waves with frequencies comprised between 0.1 to 10THz, which is waiting to be exploited. THz radiation may have amazing technological applications. These...
Medical X-ray imaging improvements contribute to better diagnosis and treatments of many medical conditions. The next breakthrough in radiography will be X-ray spectral imaging, which will make it possible to distinguish much better between the different types of biological tissues of patients’ organs than current imaging techniques. Thus, these highly precise medical imaging based on chemical contrasts will deliver...
Radiation in the 1GHz-10THz range has attracted growing attention in the last 20 years from both a basic science and an application points of view. On the one hand, several studies in modern science, such as Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Axion-Like Particles (ALPs), arrangement of proteins and electron/hole/phonon dynamics, show distinctive signals in this frequency...
The RAMANTIS project aims to develop a unique system capable of ‘seeing’ the chemical composition of materials and biological tissues. Raman spectroscopy is a ubiquitous technique for material inspection, offering accurate and non-destructive identification of the composition of samples. Raman imaging (RI) applies this technique to extended two-dimensional samples. Current RI systems require scanning times of seconds to even...
The overall aim of neaR-infrarEd resonant caVity enhancEd grAphene/siLicon photodetectors (REVEAL) is both to develop processes for the integration of graphene into a silicon (Si) technology platform and to realise high-performance Si-based photodetectors (PDs) operating at 1550 nm. Indeed, whilst the introduction of new material like graphene in a stable and reliable Si technology has to face...
The HyPeR project objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of hyperspectral remote sensing to detect macro plastics (>25mm) and microplastics (1-5mm) in marine conditions and provide specifications for a data acquisition system for monitoring the marine plastics based upon a hyperspectral sensor. The proven knowledge that plastic polymers possess unique optical signatures in the Near InfraRed (NIR)...
Brain tumor surgery presents complex challenges due to a delicate tradeoff between removing as much neoplastic tissue as possible while minimising the loss of brain function. This is usually obtained using intraoperative direct cortical stimulation (DCS) which is considered the gold standard technique for functional mapping of the cortex. Nevertheless, DCS may trigger seizures and can only be...
A photocathode is a thin multilayer, usually deposited onto a transparent glass window. Its function is to absorb soft (visual) photons entering through the window, and to subsequently emit a detectable photoelectron into the adjacent vacuum. The probability that an incoming soft photon results in the emission of a photoelectron never exceeded 40%. With this high risk/high impact...
The main objective is to design and build the innovative CORaHE (COld Raman Head) sensor for Deep-UV Raman spectroscopy, to operate under cold environments between -30 and -5 oC. This portable sensor will perform non-destructive micro-Raman measurements of cold samples, without any limitation in size. The CORaHE sensor has been designed to cover the absence of technology to...
Recent anatomical studies on macaque brains have revealed that 80% of the network connectivity occurs at the millimetre/centimetre, i.e. mesoscopic, scale, within brain areas (Markov). However, due to technical limitations, this scale remains by far the less studied (Chemla et al 2017). Most neuronal recording techniques are indeed restricted to microscopic (neuron, intra/extracellular recordings) or macroscopic scales (whole brain)....
Proton therapy is a promising cancer treatment modality with the ability to concentrate the deposited dose (Bragg peak) on the tumour while minimising collateral damage due to low dose to healthy surrounding tissue. However, uncertainties in the Bragg peak position limit clinical utility. Especially due to range uncertainties, patient movement and tissue deformation, the localisation accuracy is...
