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Monday, October 12, 2020
3:30 pm
Presenter: Dr. Thomas Theis (Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University)
Parahydrogen based hyperpolarization methods can create nuclear spin hyperpolarization directly in room temperature solutions to enhance NMR and MRI signals by up to seven orders of magnitude, depending on the magnetic field. This technology opens new windows of opportunity in the field of magnetic resonance. In this talk, specific focus is on:
- “Hyperpolarization chemistry of drugs”, where select antifungals and antibiotics are examined as potential hyperpolarized NMR sensors.
- “Micro to milli Tesla NMR” where unconventional NMR detection schemes are used to detect hyperpolarized molecules with potentially portable devices.
- “Nanoscale NMR” that combines hyperpolarization with optical NMR sensors in nitrogen vacancy diamonds to deliver chemical analysis on or close to surfaces.
- “Decoherence-Free NMR” that emerge when hyperpolarized molecules are placed in highly resonant RF circuits leading to RASER (Radiofrequency Assisted Stimulated Emission of Radiation).
Dr. Thomas Theis is Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research is focused on hyperpolarization technology and unconventional NMR and MRI detection schemes. Dr. Theis was born in Heidelberg, Germany, raised in Tenerife, Spain, and completed his undergraduate and masters at the Georg-August University of Goettingen (Germany). Dr. Theis received his Ph.D. in 2012 from UC Berkeley (USA) working with Professor Alexander Pines on “zero-field NMR” and “parahydrogen hyperpolarization schemes” for portable NMR. Dr. Theis conducted postdoctoral research at Duke University (USA) with Professor Warren Warren focused on “singlet states for hyperpolarization storage”, and worked on “low-field NMR” as visiting professor at RWTH Aachen University with Professor Stephan Appelt (Germany). In 2015, he was promoted to Research Assistant Professor at Duke University developing “cost-efficient hyperpolarization techniques for molecular imaging”. Since 2018, Dr. Theis has led the North Carolina State University Hyperpolarization Laboratory.