2026-09-01 (Graduate Students) Jia Yu (Jalen) Ji officially joined us from UBC as an MSc student. Welcome Jalen!

2026-08-19 (MSc Thesis Defense) Congratulations to Ula on successfully defending her MSc thesis! Many thanks to her wonderful committee members, Profs. Juewen Liu and Anna Klinkova, along with Prof. Donna Strickland, for chairing the defense. Ula will continue with us as a PhD student.

2026-06-30 (Professional Service) Prof. Yu served on a CIHR review committee for the Project Grant competition as an early career reviewer.

2026-06-21 (Conference Invitation) Prof. Yu was invited to deliver a talk at the Materials Research Society (MRS) Spring meeting (2027) in the symposium of “Biophotonics at the Nanoscale: Nanophotonic Materials for Sensing, Imaging, and Control of Biological Systems”.

2026-05-31 (Lab News) Our Raman microscope has finally arrived at C2-266.

2026-05-24 (Invited Talk) Prof. Yu delivered two invited talks at “Trends and Problems in Analytical Spectroscopy (TAPAS)” and “‘New Horizons in Raman Scattering symposia” at the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) conference (x2026). Ula also delivered her first poster presentation in the analytical chemistry section.

2025-10-02 (Department Seminar) Prof. Yu delivered a seminar in the Department of Chemistry at Western University. He also served as an external examiner for Dr. Lorena Veliz’s doctoral thesis. Many thanks to Prof. François Lagugné-Labarthet for the invitation!

2025-09-24 (Department Seminar) Prof. Yu delivered a seminar in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Michigan State University. Many thanks to Prof. Taeho Kim for the invitation!

2025-09-01 (Graduate Student) Joseph Hong joined us as our second graduate student from McMaster University (Chemical Biology). Welcome Joseph!

2025-06-24 (Grant) Our lab received a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) to support the purchase of an intravital Raman microscope!

2025-06-19 (Invited Talk) Prof. Yu delivered an invited talk at the Plasmonics-From Fundamentals to Applications symposium at the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) conference. Thank you to Dr. Li-Lin Tay for the invitation!

2025-04-01 (Grant) Our lab received the first Discovery Grant from National Sciences and Engineering Research Council Of Canada (NSERC)!

2024-10-21 (Invited Talk) Prof. Yu delivered an invited talk in the SERS session at the SciX conference (The Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS)). It was a wonderful surprise and an honor to see Prof. Nick Stone (University of Exter) highlight our work in his plenary lecture.

2024-09-01 (Graduate Student) Urszula (Ula) Mastej joined our lab as our first graduate student, coming from McGill University (Bioengineering). Welcome Ula!

2024-05-16 (Seed Funding) Our lab, together with Prof. Shirley Tang’s lab in Chemistry, received another seed funding award from the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) and the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB) for the project, “Multiplexed Raman Imaging for Live Breast Cancer Models.”

2024-05-01 (Seed Funding) Our lab received 2024 International Research Partnership Grant (IRPG) seed funding from the University of Waterloo Office of Research for our quantum sensing project proposal, “Nanodiamond-Based In Vivo Quantum Sensors for Reactive Oxygen Species in Living Subjects.”