September 1, 2000

Department of Chemistry receives grant for laser system

The Department of Chemistry was awarded a subcontract for a state-of-the art laser system and $200,000 in research support over the next two years. The subcontract is part of an Advanced Technology Program (ATP) grant awarded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to Informed Diagnostics Inc., an optical-diagnostic start-up company in Sunnyvale California. The total grant is $2 million from which Loyola and Stanford University both received research subcontracts.

As part of this subcontract, laser diagnostic systems based on the cavity ring-down technique will be assembled and used to measure the gas-phase absorption spectra of volatile organic compounds. This research will enable Informed Diagnostics Inc., to realize the goal of the grant which is to develop portable devices based on cavity ring-down spectroscopy, enabling highly sensitive "sniffers" for detecting explosives or drugs in security applications and for a variety of diagnostic applications in medicine.