New Twist on Optical Tweezers

The Supersized Science podcast features research and discoveries nationwide enabled by advanced computing technology and expertise at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. TACC science writer Jorge Salazar hosts the podcast. Optical tweezers manipulate tiny things like cells and nanoparticles using lasers. While they might sound like tractor beams from science fiction, the fact is their development garnered scientists a Nobel Prize in 2018. Scientists have now used TACC’s Stampede2 and Lonestar5 supercomputers to make optical tweezers safer to use on living cells with applications to cancer therapy, environmental monitoring, and more. On the podcast is Pavana Kollipara, a recent UT Austin graduate who co-authored a study on optical tweezers published August 2023 in Nature Communications, written just before he completed his PhD in mechanical engineering under fellow study co-author Yuebing Zheng of UT Austin, the corresponding author of the paper. Music Credit: Raro Bueno, Chuzausen freemusicarchive.org/music/Chuzausen/ Story link: https://tacc.utexas.edu/news/latest-news/2023/10/31/new-twist-on-optical-tweezers/