About

How it began: 2004

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Our story begins in 2004, when Frank Vollmer became a Rowland Fellow and independent group leader at the Rowland Institute at Harvard. He came from Rockefeller University, where his PhD with Prof. Libchaber showed that light circling inside a tiny glass sphere, a whispering-gallery mode, shifts when proteins stick to its surface. At Harvard we set out to turn that into a general tool for seeing biomolecules without labels.

Early results put the method on the map: label-free detection of proteins and DNA, then a single virus in 2008, and a Nature Methods review with Stephen Arnold on detection down to single molecules.

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Erlangen: 2010–2016

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In 2010 we moved to Germany as a Max Planck Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, with a parallel appointment at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Here the sensor reached single molecules: nucleic acid interactions followed one molecule at a time (Nature Nanotechnology, 2014) and single atomic ions interacting with gold nanorods (Nature Photonics, 2016, a cover article).

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Exeter: 2016 to today

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In 2016 we moved to the University of Exeter, where Frank is Professor of Biophysics, Nano & Quantum Sensing at the Living Systems Institute. Combining microcavities with gold nanorods (optoplasmonic sensing) let us watch single enzymes at work (Science Advances, 2017) and single thiol sites at attomolar concentrations (Nature Communications, 2020). We wrote the textbook Optical Whispering-Gallery Modes for Biosensing(Springer) and founded the S3IC conference series. Honours include an EPSRC Established Career Fellowship and the Institute of Physics Rosalind Franklin Medal and Prize.

Recent highlights: thermodynamic penalties on single enzymes, neurotransmitters on lipid membranes, and single atomic ions with plasmon-enhanced microlasers (Nature Photonics, 2026).