Professor Kristin Wustholz
Professor Kristin Wustholz
Department of Chemistry
The College of William and Mary
Host: Professor Aaron Massari
Harnessing Single-Molecule Blinking for Photocatalysis and Multiplexed Imaging
Illuminating complex structures and processes at the nanoscale using fluorescent probes is a priority for many applications of vital importance to society. In particular, single-molecule fluorescence approaches have allowed for conquering the diffraction limit of light and revealed hidden phenomena arising from photochemistry and nanoscale motion in complex environments such as cells, polymers, and nanomaterials. For these applications and others, the time-dependent emission intensity (also known as blinking dynamics) from individual probe molecules plays an essential role. Most single-molecule studies utilize blinking to probe environmental heterogeneity or to localize molecules and achieve high spatial resolution. Our strategy is to decipher the blinking mechanisms of single emitters in complex environments using robust statistical analysis and modeling so that their intensity fluctuations can be controlled and harnessed for new opportunities in multicolor super-resolved imaging and probe design.
Kristin Wustholz
Kristin Wustholz is the Mansfield Associate Professor of Chemistry at William & Mary. She obtained B.A.S. in chemistry and philosophy from Muhlenberg College. Kristin obtained her PhD in 2007 from the University of Washington in Seattle, funded in part by an NSF IGERT fellowship. Her research with Profs. Bart Kahr and Phil Reid involved single-molecule spectroscopy of dyed salt crystals. As a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, she studied plasmonics, LSPR microscopy, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), and single-molecule SERS with Prof. Richard Van Duyne. She has been at William & Mary since 2010, where her group uses single-molecule and plasmon-enhanced spectroscopies to study a variety of problems including solar energy conversion, biological imaging, and art conservation. Kristin’s efforts in research and teaching have been recognized by the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2016), Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence (2020), and being named a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Liberal Arts at William & Mary.
