2021 was an important year for our biospec group and the CMR. Below are some highlights.

We welcomed to biospec the following researchers: Dr Adam Burke as a PostDoc, and PhD students Shwan Ahmed, Afeefa Chaudhary, Cris Saladas, Amy Colleran, Amy McMullen as well as Phil Dutton and Sahand Shams with collaborators.

We also welcomed Prof Najla Almasoud and Prof Taghrid Alomar from Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University in Saudi Arabia. Najla and Taghrid are joining us on sabbatical for 12 months and are working on SERS in drug detection and quantification and food security.

Cassio published his first paper with our group in Analytical Chemistry about ‘Imaging isotopically labeled bacteria at the single cell level using high-resolution optical infrared photothermal spectroscopy’ Our first paper using O-PTIR spectroscopy.

Mehrvash published her first paper in Applied Sciences where through bottle SORS was used for authentication of extra virgin olive oil.

Our first paper on SRS was also published in Clinical Spectroscopy which was led by Cassio and highlighted methods to achieve hyperspectral stimulated Raman spectroscopy in live cells.

Funding news included:

• BBSRC for COVID
• Unilever for Mapping the Human Multi-Ome
• EPSRC-SFI on Cutting Edge Analytical Solutions for Smart, Integrated, Efficient Biopharma. Production