Facilities
Facilities & Capabilities
The lab houses customized atomic force microscopes, in-house-built optical tweezers, TIRF-based microscopy, a power hardware-in-the-loop testbed with a hundred-plus physical grid devices, and supporting instrumentation and computation.
Several facilities are available for external use through sponsored research or contract collaboration. See Industry Partnerships for how to engage.
Scanning Probe Microscopy
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Custom Multi-Mode Atomic Force Microscopes
A suite of atomic force microscopes customized in-house for high-bandwidth, minimally-invasive imaging and quantitative material property measurement at the nanoscale. Includes derivatives of the Digital Instruments Multimode platform acquired in 1998 and subsequent modifications enabling Transient Force AFM, multi-frequency measurements, and real-time property determination.
Available for external use / collaboration
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Asylum Molecular Force Probe (3D)
A three-dimensional molecular force probe used for high-resolution force spectroscopy of biomolecules including dystrophin, utrophin, and molecular motors.
Available for external use / collaboration
Optical Tweezers & Fluorescence
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Custom Optical Tweezers
In-house built dual-beam and single-beam optical tweezers systems with LMI-based feedback control. Used for high-bandwidth force estimation and studies of motor proteins, molecular clamps, and non-spherical particles under iterative learning control.
Available for external use / collaboration
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TIRF-Based Microscopy
Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence microscopy for single-molecule imaging in cellular contexts.
Power Systems
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Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) Testbed
A power hardware-in-the-loop testbed developed under the ARPA-E NODES program, integrating over 100 physical grid-edge devices — photovoltaic inverters, battery storage inverters, home appliances — with real-time simulation of larger grid networks. Enables validation of distributed control algorithms and cyber-physical security methods at scale.
Available for external use / collaboration
Instrumentation & FPGA
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FPGA-Based System Identification Module
A custom FPGA-based module designed for real-time system identification with application to atomic force microscopy, published in the Review of Scientific Instruments (Ghosal, Pradhan, Salapaka 2018).
Computation
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Computational Facilities
Computational resources supporting machine-learning training (physics-augmented deep learning, reinforcement learning), large-scale simulation of dynamical networks, and offline analysis of single-molecule and grid measurement data.
Interested in a collaboration or contract measurement?
Contact murtis@umn.edu with a brief description of your target measurement or research question, or see Industry Partnerships for the full engagement options.