Optics and Photonics Research Group
 

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Richard Smith

Associate Professor in Optical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering

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Biography

Richard Smith is a member of the Optics and Photonics research group.

Teaching Summary

Year 2: Contemporary Engineering Themes: Workshop on Writing a Technology Review

Year 3: Sensing Systems and Signal Processing

Year 4: Optical and Photonics Technology

Final year projects: In sensing, instrumentation, signal processing

Research Summary

High frequency ultrasonics for nanoscale sensors, imaging, and measurements on biological cells.

SRAS development for aerospace applications

Surface plasmon imaging for high throughput parallel detection of protein concentrations with applications to biomarker panel measurements for disease diagnosis.

Selected Publications

Past Research

  1. Project title: Label-free, ultra-sensitive, high-throughput screening for early detection and monitoring of Alzheimer's disease (AD). (Jan 2012 - June 2013).This project involves the development of a surface plasmon resonance instrument for the detection of biomarkers associated with AD. The instrument must provide high sensitivity measurements over a wide operating range.
  2. Project Title: SRAS KTS with Renishaw (Jan 2012 - June 2012). This involved investigating the market potential for SRAS and documenting the design and build of the current SRAS machine so that Renishaw could build their own machines.
  3. Project title: EMDA SRAS demonstrator (June 2010 - Jan 2012). This projects main aim was to build a transportable SRAS laser ultrasound system for measuring material grain structure. In addition to designing and constructing the instrument, the work involved moving to higher ultrasonic frequencies than previous generation systems. The data acquisition system has been redesigned to allow for much faster scanning speeds, required by industry
  4. Project title: Platform grants - Strategies for optimal biological imaging and Advanced Ultrasonics (March 2009 -June 2010). This work involved developing code to model surface plasmon generation. The aim of the work was to speed up the execution of the code and to convert to a form suitable for use on the university super computer. Other work investigated the possibility of manufacturing micro and nanoscale ultrasonic transducers and building up the ASOPS laser system to perform high speed pump probe measurements on these devices.
  5. Project title: Exotic ultrasonics for the real world (Nov 2005 - March 2009). This project addresses a major limitation of picosecond ultrasonic systems, namely the slow data acquisition speed. This was achieved by developing a novel detection scheme to record data in parallel without sacrificing sensitivity. We have thus far achieved an increase in data acquisition speed of 30 times over the traditional approach. This development has allowed hitherto impractical measurements to be made.

Optics and Photonics Research Group

Faculty of Engineering
The University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD


telephone: +44 (0)115 95 15536
email: optics@nottingham.ac.uk