BIOGRAPHY
Benjamin Ross Benjamin Ross received his BS and MS degrees from Penn State University in 2006 and 2007, respectively. His primary research interest is bionanophotonics: how light interacts with matter at the nanoscale and how these interesting properties can be used to design new devices to sense, probe, and manipulate biomolecules and cells. He has also worked in computational optics, astrophysical optics, and solar cells.

Integrated Plasmonic Optical Trapping (iPOT) [BPN476]
We are developing a multiplexed integrated plasmonic optical trapping (iPOT) device, which has the capability of optically modulated size-selective cellular trapping. This device utilizes the non-uniform radiation forces generated on a localized cell body of certain dielectric properties by the scattered electromagnetic field when an array of integrated nanoplasmonic structures is irradiated with white light (or a specific NIR laser). The trapping capability is maximized by tuning the plasmon resonance frequency of the integrated nanostructures in tightly packed, high density patterns, each sized appropriately to capture the specific cell size of interest. The accumulation of plasmonic forces radiated from each individual nanoplasmonic structure culminates in a final trapping force greater than other external forces exerted on the cell. This technique can potentially filter a heterogeneous cell population via size exclusion. Our goals are to demonstrate the temporal manipulation and sorting of heterogeneous cell populations.