We introduce

Issue by issue we introduce members of the NCCR Nanoscale Science. We start with NCCR PhD students.

Javad Farahani, working at the University of Basel in the group of Professor Bert Hecht

1. What is the topic of your PhD thesis?
Development of a superresolution near-field optical microscopy based on nano-optical antenna.
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Julien Toquant, working at the University of Basel in the group of Professors Dieter Pohl and Bert Hecht

1.What is the topic of your PhD thesis?
Design and operation of a versatile Scanning Near-field Optical Microscope (SNOM) with nano-scale electrochemical reactions capability.
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Audrius Alkauskas, working at the University of Basel in the group of Professors Alexis Baratoff and Professor Christoph Bruder

1.What is the topic of your PhD thesis?
So far the official name of my thesis is not clear. It will most probably be called "Theoretical modelling of atoms and molecules on noble metals surfaces", but the name is rather general, I admit. In practice, I perform DFT (Density Functional Theory) calculations with well-tested codes (CPMD and ABINIT) and do some C-programming myself. I am especially happy about collaborating with experimentalists, which makes my work very interesting..
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Adriaan Bredekamp, working at the University of Basel in the group PD Dr. Martin Hegner

1.What is the topic of your PhD thesis?
The topic of my thesis is "Dynamic mode measurements in liquid using cantilever arrays that are coated with membrane proteins". Basically, we build an electronic nose that can measure in a liquid environment virus particles. For the protein we use FhuA that is found in the outer membrane of E.coli and to this we bind the T5 Phage virus that only binds to FhuA (think molecular recognition here!).
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