The Haynes Research Group

Principal Investigator: Dr. Christy L. Haynes

Christy completed her undergraduate work at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN (1998) with a major in Chemistry and minors in Mathematics and Spanish. Christy's doctoral work was done at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL (2003) under the direction of Richard P. Van Duyne. Her doctoral thesis title is "Fundamentals and Applications of Nanoparticle Optics and Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering." Before arriving at the University of Minnesota, Christy performed postdoctoral research in the laboratory of R. Mark Wightman at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2005). Her efforts in the Wightman lab focused on applying microelectrode amperometry to probe single cell exocytosis.

Dr. Haynes' curriculum vitae is available.

Photo credit: Richard G. Anderson, used with permission from Fall 2007 Discovery, the magazine of the U of MN Graduate School.

Postdoc: Dr. Nathan Wittenberg

Nate joins the Haynes Lab after a postdoctoral stint at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Nate did his undergraduate work at the University of Minnesota and completed his Ph.D. at Penn State University (2006) under the guidance of Prof. Andrew Ewing, where he used giant liposomes to mimic cellular processes.

Nate will be using UV-resonance Raman microscopy to monitor and map neuronal synthesis, storage and transport of neurotransmitters.

Dr. Wittenberg's curriculum vitae is available.

Graduate Student: Shencheng Ge, Joined in Fall '05

Shencheng is a fourth year graduate student. While in the Haynes lab, he will work to exploit electrochemical techniques to study chemical messenger storage in platelets and basophils.

Graduate Student: Bryce Marquis, Joined in Fall '05

Bryce is a fourth year graduate student. While in the Haynes lab, he will explore new techniques to assess nanoparticle toxicology in biological cells.

Graduate Student: Kyle Bantz, Joined in Fall '06

Kyle is a third year graduate student. While in the Haynes lab, she will use surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to characterize the pollution of soil and sediment with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, and dioxins.

Graduate Student: Sara Love, Joined in Fall '06

Sara is a third year graduate student. While in the Haynes lab, she will explore bioanaytical aspects of nanoparticle cytotoxicity in chromaffin and dendritic cells.

Graduate Student: Melissa Maurer-Jones, Joined in Fall '07

Melissa is a second year graduate student. While in the Haynes lab, she will explore the correlation between reactive oxygen species and chemical messenger secretion after cell exposure to nanoscale materials.

Graduate Student: Yu-Shen Lin, Joined in Fall '07

Yu-Shen is a second year graduate student. While in the Haynes lab, he will synthesize novel chemotherapeutic nanoparticles and assess their cytotoxicity using amperometry.

Graduate Student: Audrey Guerard, Joined in Fall '08

Audrey is a first year graduate student. While in the Haynes lab, she will work to build an in vitro model of the immune system and explore how immune cells communicate with one another.

Undergraduate Student: Kathy Braun

Kathy is a junior undergraduate biomedical engineering major at the University of Minnesota. While in the Haynes lab as a UROP researcher, she will prepare cultured cell samples for TEM and perform microscopy analysis.

Undergraduate Student: Courtney Jones

Courtney is an undergraduate Chemistry major at the University of Minnesota who has been working in the Haynes lab since Spring 2008. While in the Haynes lab, she will work with mentor Kyle Bantz to fabricate novel SERS substrates and characterize them using atomic force microscopy.

Undergraduate Student: Michelle Malaska

Michelle is a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota undergraduate program who has been working in the Haynes lab since Spring 2008. While in the Haynes lab, she will work with mentor Sara Love to investigate the effects of nanoparticle on cellular behavior.

Undergraduate Student: Kyle Kulseth

Kyle is an undergraduate Chemistry major at the University of Minnesota who has been working in the Haynes lab since Spring 2008. While in the Haynes lab, he will work with mentor Shencheng Ge to explore immune cell communication using microelectrochemistry techniques.

Undergraduate Student: Emily Woo

Emily is a sophomore undergraduate Chemistry major at the University of Minnesota who has been working in the Haynes lab since Summer 2008. While in the Haynes lab, she will be working with mentor Shencheng Ge to investigate the secretion of chemical messengers from individual blood platelets.

Archive of Group Photos

April 2007

August 2006

Group Alumni

Postdoc: Dr. Adam D. McFarland

Adam is now a research scientist at Eli Lilly. He joined the Haynes research group as an expert in Raman spectroscopy ready to explore the synthesis and transport of neurotransmitters inside cultured neuronal cells.

Adam earned his B.S. at the University of Dayton (1999) and his Ph.D. in the Van Duyne group at Northwestern University (2004). He performed one year of postdoctoral research in the Hersam group at Northwestern University (2005) before joining the Haynes lab.

Dr. McFarland's curriculum vitae is available.

Undergraduate Summer Researcher 2008: Richard Kurker

Rick is an undergraduate at Providence College who spent Summer 2008 in the Haynes lab as a Lando NSF REU student. Rick worked with Nate to monitor real-time calcium concentration in leech neurons and won the Lando poster session at the end of the summer.

Undergraduate Student: Lindsay Werkmeister

Lindsay was an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota who graduated in December 2007. While in the Haynes lab for two years, she focused on nanoparticle synthesis and TEM characterization.

Undergraduate Student: Han Na Park

Han Na was a senior undergraduate Chemistry major at the University of Minnesota. While in the Haynes lab, she developed retinal tissue protocols and performed electrochemical measurements in that tissue with Shencheng.

Undergraduate Summer Researchers 2006 : Virginia Senkomago and Eva Cornell

Virginia graduated from Berea College and spent Summer 2006 in the Haynes lab as a Lando NSF REU student. Virginia worked with Shencheng to culture retinal neurons.

Eva graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College and spent Summer 2006 in the Haynes lab as an NNIN REU student. Eva worked with Bryce to prepare TEM samples for cytotoxicity studies.