Kathleen M. Gough

Critical chemical interactions occur at the nanoscale but impact materials at every dimension. Research in my group is centred on vibrational spectroscopy, more specifically, spectrochemical imaging at micro- to nano-scale. Projects range from Environmental: Arctic sea ice diatoms (climate change) and biodegradation of plastics (pollution) to Biomedical: scar in post-infarct cardiac tissue (heart disease), biomarkers in cells, as well as various applications with collaborators in Food Science and in local industry. Techniques include FTIR microscopic imaging at the 5-to-10 micron length scale, and super-resolution experiments that break the infrared diffraction limit, achieved with Quantum Cascade lasers (QCL) in our mIRage-LifeSciences instrument:  Optical-PhotoThermal IR and correlative PTIR, Raman and Fluorescence-detected PTIR imaging. We are only just beginning to explore the potential of this state-of-the -art CFI-funded instrument.