Photon Counting, Nanotech Topics at UCLA

Photon-counting microdectors and their applications will be the topic of Sergio Cova, IEEE-LEOS distinguished lecturer, in a seminar series sponsored by the California NanoSystems Institute at the Univerity of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Tuesday at 2 p.m. at UCLA, Young Hall 2033. Cova is a Life Fellow of IEEE and an electronics professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy; he is also a founder of MPD Micro-Photon-Devices, a Bolzano, Italy-based developer of photon-counting devices based on solid-state single photon avalanche photodiodes (SPADs). Cova pioneered the development of SPADs and the extension of photon-counting techniques to the infrared spectral range with devices in germanium and III-V semiconductors; he also invented the active-quenching circuit, which opened the way to the application of SPADs and developed it to a monolithic integrated form. A photon counter is used to evaluate the luminance of a surface by determining the number of photons emitted from a sample surface area. The seminar will cover the evolution of SPAD devices and their applications, including the analysis of DNA and proteins, studies of single molecules, adaptive optics systems in modern telescopes and noninvasive testing of ultralarge-scale integration circuits. At 5 p.m. (LaKretz Hall 110), Douglas Philp, a reader and a researcher with the Philp Laboratory in the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences, School of Chemistry, at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, will present "Harnessing Replication for Nanoscale Manufacturing". A reception will follow the seminar in Life Sciences 2320. RSVP: cnsiadmin@cnsi.ucla.edu