Farfield Group Press Releases

01 Oct 2008 - Undergraduate Research using DPI at Pomona College

Undergraduate chemistry students at Pomona College, in
Claremont, Calif., are using Farfield’s fully automated Dual
Polarisation Interferometer, the AnaLight® Flex, to do important
research that is being published in top chemical journals.
Professor Mal Johal’s research group at Pomona recently acquired the AnaLight® Flex through funds from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. “It is great to see our technology being used in an academic environment for undergraduates” says Dr. Mark Gostock, Farfield’s Product Manager.
“The students are able to benefit from the hands-on approach to education that Pomona offers, and it’s fantastic to see them making great strides their
research with our instrument.”


The Johal Research Group explores self-assembly and adsorption
phenomena with the goal of fabricating novel materials for
biosensing, photovoltaics, organic LED systems, and lab-on-a-chip applications for drug binding, protein-proteininteractions and antibody detection. Since it was created two years ago, the group has published over 10 papers in highimpact journals such as Langmuir, Biomacromolecules, and the Journal of Physical Chemistry. All of these papers were are result of undergraduate research and co-authored by undergraduates.
Earlier this year, the group acquired Farfield’s AnaLight® Flex Dual Polarisation Interferometer (DPI) instrument and has already had discoveries on polyelectrolyte multilayer formation published in Langmuir (http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/langd5/asap/abs/la802496h.html). The work was performed by undergraduate students Thomas Lane, Will Fletcher and Michael Gormally.


Their research was supported by a number of complementary analytical methods and is an exemplary piece of contemporary surface science research. Cynthia Selassie, Associate Dean and Professor of Chemistry, who also collaborates with the Johal group on biochemical surface interactions, states: “ The DPI presents a great opportunity for our undergraduate chemistry and molecular biology majors to get hands-on experience with state of the art instrumentation.”


Farfield is delighted that our instrument has proved such a benefit to their work and looks forward to reading more of their research in coming years.
Further details about the Johal Research Group at Pomona College can be found at http://pages.pomona.edu/~msj04747/