ROCKY MOUNTAIN SECTION OPTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
                              &
           IEEE LASERS AND ELECTROOPTICS SOCIETY


                        Jan. Meeting
                *** Eastman Kodak Speaker ***

Date:  Thursday, 20 Jan. 2000
Time:  7:00 PM refreshments, 7:30 PM talk
Place: National Institute of Standards and Technology
       325 Broadway, Boulder, CO
       Room 1107


Title: Development of an Ultra-Sensitive Surface Plasmon
       Resonance Based Biosensor

       Hans Schuessler
       Physics Dept.
       Texas A&M University
       schuessler@phys.tamu.edu



Abstract:

A promising approach for the development of a sensitive 
physico-chemical technique for the monitoring of biomolecular 
reactions at physiological concentrations is based on the 
novel opto-electronic principle of the surface plasmon 
resonance.  The surface plasmon resonance manifests itself as
a dip in the angular dependence of the intensity of the 
reflected light, since some energy of the laser beam is 
transformed into the energy of the excited surface plasmons. 
We have demonstrated that changes in the adsorption during a 
bio-molecular reaction as small as a fraction of a molecular 
monolayer can be measured with the surface plasmon resonance 
technique, thus providing a unique real-time measuring tool 
for the quantitation of bio-molecular processes. Our recent 
results on aqueous solutions, biomolecular reactions, and 
interactions in living subcellular structures will be 
presented.


Biography:

Hans A. Schuessler heads the Stored Ion and Laser Laboratory 
of Texas A&M University. He was appointed full professor of 
Physics in 1981. After receiving his doctorate from the 
University of Heidelberg, he worked as an Assistant Professor 
at the Technological University of Berlin, and as Research 
Assistant-Professor and Associate-Professor at the University 
of Washington. For shorter periods of time he had visiting 
appoinments at CERN(Switzerland), the University of Mainz, 
GSI Heavy Ion Facility, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum 
Optics (Germany), Brookhaven and Oakridge National 
Laboratories (USA), INS of the University of Tokyo,the KARC 
in Kobe ,and JAERI in Tokai Mura (Japan). He is a Fellow of 
the American Physical Society and the Founding Member of the 
APS Topical Group on Fundamental Constants and Precise Tests 
of Physical Laws. His basic research is in Ion Storage 
Spectroscopy, On-Line Laser Spectroscopy of short-lived 
isotopes and Quantum Optics. The applied research covers 
Cavity-Enhanced Photothermal Spectroscopy, Capillary Waves, 
non-linear acoustic phenomena, and studies of biomolecular 
reactions in real time using the surface plasmon resonance.