FIP Seminar: Co-hosted with Civil & Environmental Engineering "Adventures in environmental plasmonics- The application of Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) for environmental analyte detection"

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Wed, 02/27/2019 - 12:00 to 13:00

Presenter

Dr. Peter Vikesland, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech

Clean air and clean water are critical requirements for environmental sustainability. To assure the quality of these matrices, we currently rely upon a broad range of monitoring techniques - many of which are outdated, unreliable, or excessively expensive. Recent advances in both nanotechnology and biotechnology, however, are poised to provide novel and previously unattainable alternatives that have the potential to be more sensitive as well as more cost-effective than many existing methods. In this presentation, we will present work conducted to develop gold enabled plasmonic platforms that facilitate detection of inorganic, organic, biologic, and nanoparticulate contaminants. As will be shown, both light spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy can be used to detect and quantify environmental contaminants in a range of different media. A particular focus will be on detection of antibiotic resistance genes in water. Dr. Peter J. Vikesland is the Nick Prillaman Professor of Engineering at Virginia Tech. He received his B.A. from Grinnell College in Chemistry in 1993 and M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of Iowa in 1995 and 1998. Dr. Vikesland's research interests examine the fate of nanomaterials in the environment and their use to improve sensors for environmental quality assessment. He is a past President of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP), is a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER awardee.