News

Prof. Edik Rafailov (AIPT) as a PI and partner of a large consortium has been awarded a prestigious 4 year H2020 grant worth €4.7M. This is collaborative work with 11 partners (Aston part over €620k). The main target of the project is to develop a new concept of label-free, multi-modal microscopy and endoscopic imaging operating in the new wavelength region with multiple imaging and spectroscopic technologies, including NIR confocal reflectance microscopy, multi-photon microscopy and spontaneous Raman spectroscopy.

Professor Edik Rafailov (Coordinator), Dr Sergei Sokolovski (both AIPT) and Dr Rhein Parri (LHS) has won an enormously prestigious award from the EC Future and Emerging Technology (FET) Scheme. The scheme published success rate is below 5%, making it amongst the toughest in the H2020 suite of schemes. The Proposal, NEUROPA attracting €3.6 million, with €977k going to the Aston team. The NEUROPA consortium has assembled to develop a conceptually novel non-invasive theranostic approach. We will develop a non-invasive system, which modulates long-term activity in specific cortico-sub-cortical networks implicated in specific brain disorders. This will be achieved by two-photon activation of novel phytochrome actuators that control the expression of genes involved in synaptic plasticity. The resulting increase in cortical and subcortical network activity will lead to the long term alleviation of dysfunction using novel phytoptogenetics technology.

The 5th summer School on ''Photonics meets Biology'' organized jointly by Prof. E.U. Rafailov (AIPT, UK) with Dr.  Maria Farsari (FORTH, Greece)  and Dr. Pablo Loza-Alvarez (ICFO, Spain) will take place this year at FORTH ,Heraklion, Crete, Greece between 16-20th September , 2019. The summer School would include Plenary talks by Prof. Yuri Kivshar and Prof. Francesco Pavone. For more details and registration links, please follow the link below :

http://esperia.iesl.forth.gr/~mfarsari/

Prof. Edik Rafailov jointly with Dr. Pablo Loza-Alvarez (ICFO, Spain) and Prof. Maria Farsari (IESL-FORTH, Greece) are organising the 4th "Photonics Meets Biology" Summer School in Tarragona, Spain, on September 19 - 22, 2017. This event will bring together experts from world-leading academic centres in order to educate students and young researchers in the two cutting-edge fields.

A paper co-authored by Prof. Edik Rafailov, highlighting the novel approach for the enhancement of THz photoconductive antenna operation by using optical nanoantennae, was featured on the front cover of the high impact Laser & Photonics Reviews Journal (No 11(1)/2017).

In this paper, the main results on hybrid THz antennas, comparison of the approaches to their implementation, and  further perspectives of their development, including an application of all-dielectric nanoantennas instead of plasmonic ones, have been summarised.

Our group developed an antenna that can aid in reducing sources of terahertz radiation down to the size of a fingertip. The antenna is a "sandwich" of semiconductor layers combined with quantum dots. The scientists demonstrated that such antennas can lay foundation for a new type of universal systems that are capable of both transmitting and receiving terahertz radiation. Compact devices, operating at terahertz range, can find applications in medicine and biology for tumor visualization and in aerospace industry for high-speed communication systems. The study was published in Laser & Photonics Reviews.

http://www.opli.net/opli_magazine/eo/2016/quantum-dots-offer-new-platform-for-fingertip-terahertz-devices-nov-news/

Professor Edik Rafailov is part of a successful InnovateUK funded feasibility project "CoolBlue" worth almost £295k led by Compound Semiconductor Technologies Global Ltd. This is a highly innovative project that aims to develop next generation laser technology feasibility for use in the emerging field of quantum sensing.

Professor Edik Rafailov is a partner in a successful consortium led by the University of Birmingham. The team has won an award from the H2020 EC RISE Scheme. The Proposal, VISGEN, attracting €1.26 million, with €126k going to the Aston team. 
VISGEN is a multidisciplinary, international and intersectoral collaborative effort that focuses on the personnel exchange between partners located in the EU and Asia. It is designed to develop and disseminate the key enabling photonics technologies to visualise nuclear processes at single gene and single cell levels in intact brains. The delivery of significant advances in the technology of this field necessitates intensive interaction between the academic and commercial sectors to enable researchers to pinpoint gene transcription in living cells. Although this research and knowledge transfer program focuses on the brain, with an interest in nuclear processes in neurons, the technology can be used in any living cells and will be of broad interest to the community.