Research Interests

My interest is in single molecule biophysics and ultrashort laser-molecule interactions. I have experience in designing instruments for the life sciences, particularly in fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy. My current work is in investigating the effects of UV laser propagation in optical materials for NIF.

Ph.D., Applied Science-Engineering, University of California at Davis, 2012

B.S., Physics, University of California at Los Angeles, 2001

• Extracting the Distribution of Laser Damage Precursors on Fused Silica Surfaces for 351 nm, 3 ns laser pulses at high fluences (20-150/cm2). Ted Laurence, Jeff Bude, Sonny Ly, Nan Shen, Michael Feit. Accepted for publication, Optics Express, Vol 20, Issue 10, 2012
• Stoichiometry of reconstituted high density lipoproteins in the hydrated state determined by photon antibunching. Sonny Ly, Jitka Petrlova, Thomas Huser, Samantha Fore, Tingjuan Gao, John Voss, and Ted A. Laurence. Biophysical Journal, Vol. 101, Issue 4, pp. 970-975, August 2011
• Characterizing diffusion dynamics of a membrane protein associated with nanolipoproteins using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. T. Gao, C. Blanchette, W. He, F. Bourguet, S. Ly, F. Katzen, W. Kudlicki, P. Henderson, T. Laurence, T. Huser, M. Coleman. Protein Science, Vol. 20, Issue 2, pp. 437-447, 2010
• Time-gated single photon counting enables separation of CARS microscopy data from multiphoton-excited tissue autofluorescence. Sonny Ly, Greg McNerney, Samantha Fore, James Chan, Thomas Huser. Optics Express, Vol. 15, Issue 25, pp. 16839-16851, 2007

• 2009  Lawrence Scholar, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• 2008  NSF Research Fellowship at Chinese Academy of Science, Chemistry (Beijing, China)
• 2007  NSF Research Fellowship at Yang Ming University (Taipei, Taiwan)