The Landes Research Group at Rice University in Houston, Texas

Our Science...

Proteins interacting with a surface

Dipoles on nanowires

Nobel-Prize winning nano-chemistry

Looking over a new instrument.

A dot of green in the big city

Proteins interacting with a surface

The Landes Research Group develops new spectroscopic tools to image chemical dynamics at interfaces at the limit of a single event. Using this super-resolved chemical knowledge, we create new models to understand and predict macroscale processes like protein separation and photocatalysis.

Ensemble vs. Single Molecule

A wide range of biological and materials processes rely on nanoscale interfacial dynamics. Single molecule methods allow us to identify the chemical complexity of these interactions by revealing the underlying populations that form the ensemble measurement. In doing so, we can identify and tune the rare chemical populations that play a crucial role in reactivity.

Towards Predictive Separations

The cost of bringing a new protein based therapeutic to market averages ~$2.6 billion dollars, of which 50% can be dedicated to isolating and purifying the active compound. A primary contributor to the cost is the empirical optimization of chromatographic separation. Our lab seeks to understand separations from the scale of individual analytes, with a goal to create a new predictive model of chromatography to eliminate the need for costly empirical methods.

Breaking the Abbe-Diffraction Limit

The Abbe diffraction limit sets a lower bound of a few hundred nanometers for the size of objects we can observe with traditional optical microscopy. This limit is defined by light’s wavelength. Our lab develops new mathematical methods to break the Abbe diffraction limit and achieve spatial resolutions of just a few nanometers and time resolutions faster than traditional cameras frame times.

Welcome 01/28/2020

The LRG welcomes in two new members, Dongyu Fan and Wesley Leung. Good luck you two!

Congratulations 12/12/2019

Congratulations to Nicholas Moringo for completing his Ph.D. studies. We know you are bound for great things but will miss your input. Good luck!

Congratulations 08/09/2019

Congratulations to Nicholas Moringo for winning the Army Futures Presentation Award at the 5th Annual SCI Summer Research Symposium!

Lab Outing 08/06/2019

The Super Group returned to Minute Maid Stadium for our yearly Astros Game. Go 'Stros!

In the news... 06/01/2019

Congratulations to Miranda Gallagher, who was awarded a short talk selected from poster abstracts at the Environmental Nanotechnology GRC in Newry, ME. Her talk featured ongoing research in the Landes Group funded by the Department of Energy using single-particle spectroscopy to understand structure property relationship of nanocatalysts.

Quals Passed 04/11/2019

Congratulations to Anastasiia Misiura for passing her Qualifying Exam this week. We look forward to your accomplishments in the coming years.

More News

Predictive Separations

Spectro-electrochemistry

Protein Dynamics at Interfaces

Imaging and Signal Processing

Single-Molecule Spectroscopy

Warning, L.A., Zhang, Q., Landes, C.F., Link, S., "Nanoscale Surface-induced Unfolding of Single Fibronectin is Restricted by Serum Albumin Crowding" JPCL, 2020

Moringo, N.A., Bishop, L.D.C., Shen, H., Misiura, A., Carrejo, N.C., Baiyasi, R., Wang, W., Ye, F., Robinson, J.T., Landes C.F., "A mechanistic examination of salting out in protein-polymer membrane interactions" PNAS 2019, 116(46) 22938-22945.

A mechanistic examination of salting out in protein-polymer membrane interactions

Zhang, Q., Hernandez, T., Smith, K.W., Jebeli, S.A.H., Dai, A.X., Warning, L., Baiyasi, R., McCarthy, L.A., Guo, H., Chen, D-H, Dionne, J.A., Landes C.F., Link, S., "Unraveling the origin of chirality from plasmonic nanoparticle-protein complexes" Science 2019, 365, 6460, 1475-1478

Unraveling the origin of chirality from plasmonic nanoparticle-protein complexes

Cai, Y., Collins, S.S.E., Gallagher, M.J., Bhattacharjee, U., Zhang, R., Chow, T.H., Ahmadivand, A., Ostovar, B., Al-Zubeidi, A., Wnag, Jianfang, Nordlander, P., Landes, C.F., Link, S., "Single Particle emission spectroscopy resolves d-hole relaxation in copper nanocubes" ACS Energy lett. 2019, 4, 10, 2458-2465