Joseph Chaiken

Biography

Joseph Chaiken is a professor in Department of Chemistry, Syracuse University, New York United States. Professor Chaiken's research interests are broad, although the underlying theme is to obtain a better understanding of the fundamental interactions and processes relevant to all kinds of laser chemistry and spectroscopy. In collaboration with Professor Jerry Goodisman at Syracuse, Chaiken has developed a model to describe coalescence growth. Coalescence growth systems are ubiquitous in nature and particularly important in laser chemical systems. They have successfully applied this model to data on cryogenic helium droplets in free jet expansions collected by Professor J. P. Toennies at the Max Planck Institute (Göttingen, Germany). In collaboration with his colleagues at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Chaiken uses lasers to manipulate the defect states in thin film tungsten oxide and related materials. Such chemistry is relevant to the design, fabrication, and function of nanoscale and microscale photonic devices. He also examines the use of lasers to noninvasively probe biological systems in vivo. His lab produced the first blood volume normalized noninvasive Raman spectrum of human blood in vivo. Shown below, the strength of the features in these spectra are proportional to the concentration of various analytes in the blood, including but not limited to glucose, total protein, albumin, cholesterol, urea, and triglycerides.

Research Interest

Interactions and processes relevant to laser chemistry and spectroscopy.