Dr. Steven Lenhert

My field of research is nanobiotechnology, which involves the application of nanoscience and biology to solve technological problems. Nanoscience is a highly interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand how a material's properties change as its size is changed at length scales between the molecular scale and the macroscale. The integration of nanomaterials into functional devices is crucial for the development of technological applications of nanoscience, i.e. nanotechnology, and is an active area of my research. Biology provides an inspiration for nanoscience, with a living cell demonstrating some of the ultimate capabilities of miniaturization and integration of nanomaterials. Specifically, I am exploring a new sub-field of nanobiotechnology that I call lipid nanotechnology. This involves the fabrication, characterization and application of nano- and micro-structures composed of lipids. My research group creates these structures by advancing novel methods in nanofabrication including lipid dip-pen nanolithography and a new printing method that I've invented at FSU and named "nanointaglio." As a major biological function of lipids is compartmentalization, I seek to recreate that function in synthetic environments for applications in biosensing and high throughput screening.