Physics Colloquium
Monday, February 20, 2012, 04:00 PM
120 Engineering, Hammond Auditorium

Please join us for the next Physics colloquium on Monday, February 20 at 4:00 p.m. with refreshments starting at 3:45 p.m.

Guest speaker John Price will give a presentation titled “picoSpin: Miniature NMR Spectrometers for Fun and Profit.” All interested parties are welcome.

ABSTRACT:

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has long been the preferred analytical tool of the organic chemist. Today, its scope is expanding into other fields, especially biochemistry. Every significant research organization in these areas hosts at least one high-resolution NMR spectrometer. Modern instruments are large and complex, they rely on liquid helium for cooling a superconducting magnet, and they cost from $0.5M to $5M each. Consequently, analytical applications of NMR spectroscopy have generally been confined to research laboratories. picoSpin is a Boulder start-up that is conducting a two-fold experiment: First, can we build a drastically smaller, easier to use and less expensive high-resolution NMR spectrometer? Second, with its more limited capabilities, would such an instrument find applications and a significant market? The answer to the first question is definitely yes. I will describe a $20k shoe-box sized NMR spectrometer and demonstrate during the talk that it can collect high-resolution proton spectra of organic liquids. The answer to the second question is still unfolding, but possible applications include chemical education, chemical manufacturing, quality control, bench use by research chemists and even field inspection of chemical fluids. I’ll also share some reflections on entrepreneurship from the perspective of an academic physicist.

BIO:

Professor John Price earned a B.S. degree in physics from Yale University in 1980 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1986. His Ph.D. thesis research was conducted at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. After that he did a postdoc at Stanford on cryogenic gravitational wave detectors and then joined the physics faculty at CU Boulder in 1989. His research projects at CU have mostly been in the field of low-temperature condensed matter physics, but he has also been involved in molecular physics, experimental gravity and microwave materials. Invention of new scientific instruments has been a recurring theme in his career.

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Event Contact: Kathy Reischauer can be reached at (970) 491-6206

Sponsored by the Department of Physics