María F. García-Parajo obtained her PhD in Physical Electronics in 1993 at Imperial College, London, UK, working on the fabrication and photoluminescence spectroscopy of quantum structures based on GaAs/AlGaAs. After acquiring extensive expertise in scanning probe microscopy (STM, NSOM, AFM) at the L2M-CNRS, Bagneux, France (1993-1995) and University of Barcelona, Spain (1995-1996) she moved in 1996 to the Applied Optics group of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Her main research topics have been single molecule detection and spectroscopy using near- and far-field optical techniques with focus in photophysics of organic and autofluorescent proteins, molecular photonics and biophysics. Since 2005 she is ICREA Research Professor, first hosted at the IBEC - Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and since July 2011 at ICFO - The Institute of Photonic Sciences, leading the Single Molecule Biophotonics group.

Research interests

Our research focuses on the development of advanced optical techniques to the study of biological processes at the single molecular level on living cells. We use near-field optical approaches and photonic antennas to provide simultaneous nanoimaging and nanospectroscopy on living cells, in combination with other far-field nanoscopy methods. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy in ultraconfined volumes, and multi-color single particle tracking are exploited to gain access to dynamic processes down to the µs time resolution. In parallel, our aim is to bring biophysical inside into fundamental biological questions that have important implications for health and disease, including cell biology and immunology, in close collaboration with biologists.