Light can now trap a single bacterium, identify its strain, and test its antibiotic resistance—all in one go. This research tackles two fundamental limits of light as a measurement tool: how to image across vastly different scales (from single cells to whole tissues), and how to use light's wave properties to measure tiny forces, such as those from a moving neuron or at the boundary between classical and quantum physics. Current methods cannot do these things simultaneously or with enough sensitivity. If successful, the work could transform how we tackle antimicrobial resistance—by rapidly diagnosing infections and pinpointing effective drugs without waiting days for lab cultures. It could also map every neuronal connection in the brain, aiding understanding of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Beyond medicine, the ability to measure minute forces could improve microrheology (how fluids behave at microscopic scales) and next-generation sensors for manufacturing or navigation. The project is largely fundamental science, exploring what light can achieve when shaped and resonated with exquisite precision. Past work in photonics has led to lasers, fibre optics, and DNA sequencing—unexpected breakthroughs that emerged from similar curiosity-driven inquiry.
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Light has been used for centuries to image the world around us, and continues to provide profound insights across physics, chemistry, biology, materials science and medicine. However, what are the limits of light as a measurement tool? For example, we can use light to image single bacteria, but can we also use light to trap a single bacterium, identify the bacterial strain and assess its susceptibility to antibiotics? How can we image over multiple length scales, from single cells to multiple cellular tissue, in order to comprehensively map all the neuronal connections in the brain? Can we use a combination of resonance with the wave nature and momentum of light to measure the forces associated with the natural and stimulated motion of a single neuronal cell, or even the extremely small forces associated with phenomena at the classical-quantum interface? This proposal aims to answer these questions by exploring new and innovative ways in which we can use light to measure the natural world. This research builds on our recent advances in photonics - the science of generating, controlling and detecting light - and in particular will exploit resonant structures and shaped light. These provide us with tools for controlling the interaction of light and matter with exquisite sensitivity and accuracy. We will run three research strands in parallel and by combining their outputs, we aim to address major Global Challenges in antimicrobial resistance, neurodegenerative disease, multimodal functional imaging and next generation force, torque and microrheology. Our work is supported by a suite of UK and International project partners (both academic and industry) who are enthused to work with us and have committed over £0.5M in kind to the programme.
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