ISO Fellow Giuseppe Strangi’s research is making it possible to target individual cancer cells without drugs.

He has recently published his new method to manipulate tiny gold beads less than the wavelength of light. His techniques allow him to capture and move these nano beads to position them at will. A laser is then directed at the beads to heat them. The cancer cell gets “cooked” and is removed from the body by the immune system.

More broadly the physicist’s work focuses on optical and plasmonic properties of nanostructured soft materials and photonic metamaterials.

He explains: “The inclination toward miniaturization in the emerging generation of nanoscale materials has led to a growing interest in the physics of hybrid hetero-structures to understand and exploit interactions arising by confinement and dimensionality effects. In recent years significant strides have been made in the understanding and application of complex metallo- dielectric materials for which the optical parameters are manipulated on length scales of the order of light wavelengths.”