Research Interests

Zoe’s expertise lies on the synthesis and properties of photoactive lanthanide and transition metal complexes in supramolecular and nanoparticle designs for detection and imaging. In biomedical sciences the interests lie in using the metal signal to understand and track drug delivery in cells and tissues but also to use new platforms for therapy. In environmental science and diagnostics the sophisticated designs of metals can lead to sensitive detection of pollutants or other small molecules. Zoe’s research group has introduced new ligand designs for lanthanide complexes from polynuclear assemblies to nanoparticles as well as advancing nanoparticle probes for detection using luminescence signal from ruthenium and iridium probes on nanoparticles for imaging in cancer tissues and blood flows.

Research Themes

Our research involves the design of luminescent molecular and nanosized probes based on metals towards the development of new platforms for detection to tackle problems in biomedical and environmental sciences. We tune the photochemical properties of the metal to use new detection platforms for tracking drug delivery, sensing of small molecules but also phototherapy applications.

Our projects involve synthetic and coordination chemistry, photophysics and nanoscience moving from supramolecular design and recognition to nanostructures with interdisciplinary teams of collaborators: medical scientists, dentists, biochemists, physicists and engineers. The projects involve lanthanide and transition metal complexes with recognition sites designs to target biomolecules such as DNA or “key” analytes in environmental pollution or biological function. In some projects we employ nanoparticles as scaffolds to carry metal complexes and targeting groups in cells for multimodal imaging. We study their targeted delivery in cells using peptide and other biomolecular recognition motifs. We use luminescence microscopy techniques based on the characteristic luminescence lifetime signal. To target the design of new materials and optoelectronic devices we study the modification of surfaces with metal complexes.

Research group webpages.

Scientific Inspiration

Professor J-M Lehn (Nobel Laureate) and Professor D.G Nocera (Patterson Rockwood Chair, Harvard) as inspiring and supporting mentors, providing always “the big picture” and excitement through research findings.