ERC grant for innoFSPEC fellow Professor Ilko Bald – tracing molecules with origami nanostructures

One of the biggest challenges in chemistry is the examination of reaction mechanisms on the level of single molecules. The so-called raman spectroscopy can help solving this problem - provided that the molecules and metallic nanoparticles can be arranged in a very precise manner. At the University of Potsdam, Professor Ilko Bald and his team are doing research about the arrangement of nanoparticles and molecules by using DNA origami nanostructures. Ilko Bald holds a joint professorship of the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung, Berlin (BAM), and the University of Potsdam.

For his research Professor Bald has recently won a renowned ERC consolidator grant of the European Research Council (ERC). The award comes with around 2 Mio. Euro for the benefit of establishing an own research group. Overall there were 2538 applications - only 329 of these received an ERC grant for pathbreaking pioneer research and scientific excellence. Ilko Bald's project at the University of Potsdam is called „SMART-DNA: Single-Molecule Analytical Raman Tools based on DNA nanostructures“. It will be funded for five years and will be supported by four PhD students of the graduate school SALSA – School of Analytical Sciences Adlershof (Humboldt-University of Berlin), where Professor Ilko Bald is am member since 2013.