Overview
Our interdisciplinary research program focuses on single extracellular vesicle analysis to unravel their heterogeneity using next generation optical nanotweezers, nanoplastics analysis, engineering thermal emission using photonic bound states in the continuum, and enhancing on-chip quantum light sources. Our research contributions have been published in top peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Nanotechnology, Science, Nature Communications, Light: Science and Applications, ACS Nano, ACS Photonics, Nanoscale, PRL, Nano Letters, Optica, and others.
Through
our research, we aim to provide innovative solutions to global challenges in medicine
and healthcare, communication, sensing and sustainability of our environment.
Awards
-Best and Brightest: Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award
-NIH R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA)
-Optica Foundation Challenge Prize
-Optica Kaminow Outstanding Early Career Professional Prize
-NSF CAREER Award
-Election to Senior Membership at SPIE, IEEE and Optica (formerly Optical Society of America)
-Named Nanoscale Emerging Investigator in Nanotechnology and Nanoscience
-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research
-Light Science and Applications Global Rising Stars of Light Award, as part of a global campaign for the most brilliant young scientists in optics-related field with submissions from USA, Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, Singapore, Switzerland, UK)
-Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Award
-The year 2017 Prize in Physics by Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation in recognition of work on “plasmon nano-optical tweezers” (awarded to the top graduating doctoral candidate at Purdue University annually)
Selected Publications
Single-peak and narrowband mid-infrared thermal emitters driven by mirror-coupled plasmonic quasi-BIC metasurfaces. Yang S, He M, Hong C, Nordlander J, Maria JP, Caldwell JD, Ndukaife JC, Optica, 11, 305-314, (2024) View Abstract
Anapole-assisted low-power optical trapping of nanoscale extracellular vesicles and particles. Hong I, Hong C, Tutanov OS, Massick C, Castleberry M, Zhang Q, Jeppesen DK, Higginbotham JN, Franklin JL, Vickers K, Coffey RJ, Ndukaife JC, Nano Letters, 23, 7500-7507, (2023) View Abstract
Scalable trapping of single nanosized extracellular vesicles using plasmonics. Hong C, Ndukaife JC, Nature Communications, 14, 4801, (2023) View Abstract
Merging metasurfaces with microfluidics [Invited]. Ndukaife JC, Nature Nanotechnology, 17, 1042-1043, (2022) View Abstract
Stand-off trapping and manipulation of sub-10 nm objects and biomolecules using opto-thermo-electrohydrodynamic tweezers. Hong C, Yang S, Ndukaife JC, Nature Nanotechnology, 15, 908-913, (2020) View Abstract
Education
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Purdue UniversityMSc. in Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, Northwest
BSc. in Electrical Engineering, University of Lagos