Collaborative Research: MRI Consortium: Development of Fiber-Coupled Stimulated Emission Depletion Microscopy (STED)

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An award is made to the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the University of Denver to develop a unique miniature optical fiber-coupled microscope that will enable flexible imaging at unprecedented spatial resolution. Developed with a diverse team that includes engineers, physicists, and neuroscientists, this cutting-edge microscope will not only provide new fundamental and practical insights across research areas, but will also yield far-reaching impacts through intellectual property development and future commercialization and deployment in industry. The research team will use the new instrument to expand ongoing efforts to mentor and inspire young students from groups underrepresented in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.Real-time in-brain imaging has made tremendous advances in the past few years, allowing unprecedented inquiry into how dynamic structures such as dendritic spines enable brain functions such as learning, memory, cognition, and behavior. However, future advances in observation-based understanding of the function and response of these cellular structures are limited by the blur inherent to light's fundamental properties that obscures these features. Based on the established and Nobel Prize-winning principle of Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy, the instrument developed in this collaborative project will be capable of a 5X increase in spatial resolution. This miniature microscope will enable, for the first time, imaging of small structures such as synaptic spine dynamics and changes in myelination underlying behaviors and social interactions in behaving animals. It will also enable lithography in 3D materials at unprecedented spatial scale aimed towards the next generation of electronic devices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.