news
Feb 28, 2024
Our manuscript on multi-point laser patterning of self-polymerizing materials is now published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces (doi: 10.1021/acsami.4c00216). Led by first author Andrés Cook, we demonstrated and developed a predictive design framework for near-arbitrary patterning of peaks and seams in 2-D polymers. Congrats to the whole team, including Trevor, Kavya, AHS, and our collaborators Dr. Justin Jureller and members of the Esser-Kahn Group!
Feb 21, 2024
Dana organized and moderated a Fireside Chat for the Society of Women Engineers with Prof. Squires. We had a great time chatting over Medici sandwiches about career paths in research, and exchanged tips on how to navigate undergraduate courses, apply to and pick a graduate program, and troubleshoot uncooperative experiments.
Feb 10, 2024
The Squires Group was well-represented at the Biophysical Society Meeting in Philadelphia, PA. Ayesha, Kyle, Kavya, Trevor, Sarah, Maya, and Dana all (!!!) presented posters on their recent work, and Jiachong was selected to give a platform talk along with a poster. Dana won the Undergraduate Poster Award Competition for her poster presentation! Prof. Squires spoke in the Nanoscale Approaches to Biology Symposium, which she'll co-chair next year. Great job, team!
Jan 3, 2024
We are delighted to welcome Dr. Aria Coraor to the Squires Group. Dr. Coraor is an expert in molecular dynamics and machine-learning-assisted simulations of single-molecule interactions, and will be working to simulate and understand the signals we measure from nanoscale FRET constructs.
December 15, 2023
Andres's preprint is up on arXiv: Polymer patterning by laser-induced multi-point initiation of frontal polymerization. Together with Trevor, Kavya, and our collaborators Dr. Justin Jureller and members of the Esser-Kahn Group, we built an instrument to create near-arbitrary spatial patterns in self-polymerizing materials, and developed a theoretical framework to predict these patterns.
December 9, 2023
The Squires lab had a busy table at Physics With a BANG! 2023. In the photo, Maya, Sarah, and Kepler are demonstrating the principles of laser operation, atomic spectral lines, and diffraction, and showing off the "Minecraft Anti-Brownian Entity Localization (MABEL) Trap", an ABEL Trap simulation that Kepler built entirely in Minecraft.
August 21, 2023
Ayesha and AHS presented new work at SPIE Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation XX in San Diego. AHS's talk and Ayesha's poster focused on their work with Kavya to develop dynamic illumination strategies, including pulsed interleaved excitation, for the ABEL Trap. Check out the crowd at Ayesha's poster, for which she won the OTOM XX poster award - way to go, Ayesha!
July 7, 2023
Prof. Squires is honored to receive the PIERS Young Scientist Award. She will present our latest research results on multiplexing single-molecule measurements when she is awarded the prize at PIERS 2023 in Prague. Way to go, team!
July 3, 2023
Jiachong and Ayesha's co-authored preprint is now up on arXiv: Single-molecule fluorescence multiplexing by multi-parameter spectroscopic detection of nanostructured FRET labels. Together with Kyle, Maddie, Aria, and our collaborator Allan Drummond, we used FRET and site- and attachment-specific photophysical properties to engineer dozens of nanostructures that are uniquely distinguishable at the single-molecule level.
June 15, 2023
It's official - Maya and Sarah are joining the Squires Group. Maya will work on a project in collaboration with the Pincus Lab, and Sarah be starting up a new collaboration with the Kovar Lab. Welcome!
June 4, 2023
Congratulations to Olivia, who is graduating summa cum laude in PME after completing her honors undergraduate thesis in our lab this spring. The group celebrated this weekend with a potluck and games on Promontory Point. Next stop for Olivia: NYU's Grossman School of Medicine. Best wishes to you, Oliva; we'll miss you!
June 1, 2023
Roy Hays and Mallie Fitzgerald are joining the Squires Group for Summer 2023. Roy will work with Trevor and Andres on particle manipulation, and Mallie will join Kavya in spectroscopic studies of quantum dot photophysics. We're excited to work with you - welcome!
May 11, 2023
Kepler and Maya's preprint with our collaborators in the Frisch and La Riviere labs is now up on arXiv: Simulation of a low-Z-medium detector for low-dose high-resolution TOF-PET. Their simulations predict that a novel fluorescence-based detector material could be used for high resolution PET scans at a fraction of a standard radioactive dose to patients.
May, 2023
Dana was named as an IBD Scholar to do research in our lab this summer. She will continue her work imaging protein condensate disaggregation by molecular chaperones to help understand the molecular mechanisms by which cells recover from stress. Nice job, Dana!
May 23, 2023
The UChicago Physics department has selected Kepler and his collaborator Cameron Poe (Frisch Lab) to receive the Nathan Sugarman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. The award recognizes "...their ground-breaking work as a team developing Compton-based Time-of-Flight Positron-Emission Tomography cameras capable of reducing the radiation dose to patients by factors up to 1000". Congratulations, Kepler and Cam!
April 28, 2023
Our group had a great time exchanging tips, tricks, and new results with our neighbors at the 2nd Annual Biophysics Student Symposium hosted here in Chicago by teams from UIC. Jiachong gave a short talk, and Dana won the Best Poster award for her work (way to go, Dana!).
March 21, 2023
Kyle has been selected by the NIH to receive an F30 predoctoral fellowship for his dissertation work! The title of his proposal is "Investigating Biomolecular Condensates and Heat Shock Proteins in Cellular Responses to Sublethal Heat Shock and Fever". Congratulations, Kyle!
March 28, 2023
Jiachong gave a talk on her research at the American Chemical Society's Spring Meeting held in Indianapolis, IN. She showed our recent progress engineering spectroscopic labels for multiplexing fluorescence measurements at the single-molecule level. Nice presentation, Jiachong!
November 10, 2022
Olivia's work in collaboration with the Pincus lab is now on bioRxiv: Adaptive preservation of orphan ribosomal proteins in chaperone-stirred condensates. In this work we show that newly synthesized ribosomal proteins condense in the nucleolus during cell stress, and that cell recovery after stress depends on a key protein chaperone, Sis1.
September 15, 2022
Welcome to Keturah Mitchell-McCall! Keturah has just joined PME. Manna and Keturah will be working closely together as Keturah transitions into an administrative support role for our group this fall.
September 1, 2022
Andrés and Maya presented research posters at the AVS chapter meeting in Notre Dame, South Bend, IN. Allison gave a short talk. Great, interactive meeting - thanks to Alex Kandel for organizing!
August 5, 2022
George presented his summer research and his teaching module at the QuBBE send-off. He'll be testing out his new curriculum with CPS middle schoolers in his class, and they'll even use his actual image data to practice coding and analysis.
June 4, 2022
Maddie and Joao are graduating this spring. Maddie's off to Northwestern in the fall for a Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Joao will head to MIT to get his Ph.D. in Chemistry. Congratulations to you both; we'll miss you!
May 25, 2022
Maya has been awarded a Quad Research Grant by UChicago’s CCRF team for summer research in our group. She will be taking over Joao’s project on photoswitchable dyes. Welcome and way to go, Maya!
February 23, 2022
Jiachong and Ayesha each presented their research posters at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA. Allison gave a platform talk on our work. Everyone enjoyed meeting colleagues old and new, and hearing about exciting new biophysics research.