Heterogeneity lurks within all chemical and biological systems, but experimentally accessing and understanding the effect of this heterogeneity remains an open problem. We use trapped solid-state defects to sense target nuclear and electronic spins at the single-molecule level in chemical and biological systems to advance our understanding of the role of structural and dynamical heterogeneity.

Understanding how biomolecules behave on the few-nanometer length scale is essential to understanding their interactions and functions.  In many cases, these length scales are smaller than can be achieved with optical imaging. Our group leverages the short-range nature of spin-spin interactions by developing new techniques based on time-dependent interactions to probe the dynamics of these systems on the <10nm scale.