Dr. Jen Dionne: Changing the World at a Nano Scale
Nov 26, 2025
7 min read
A pioneer of nanophotonics uses light to uncover new data and push the frontiers of science forward.
Written by Laura Beeston
Illustrations by Lívia Prata
The creative engineer, entrepreneur, and award-winning Stanford professor Dr. Jen Dionne sculpts light at the molecular level. She is driven to illuminate the ‘science of the impossible’ across health and sustainability, motivated by everything we have yet to discover.
Back in the day, before she had a computer or the internet, her inspiration to follow science came from one of her favorite TV shows: The X-Files.
“I thought it was really cool that Dana Scully and Fox Mulder could work as a team and solve mysteries,” Jen says. “And for the longest time, I wanted to be a paranormal researcher.”
It happened that the ‘paranormal’ and ‘physics’ books were next to each other in her local bookstore, so she started reading about quantum physics, astro physics, “and all the fun physics topics.” From there, she was hooked.
In college, Jen majored in physics, systems science, and math. After graduation she moved from the midwest to Caltech, where she earned a PhD in applied physics.
At Caltech, Jen was introduced to nanophotonics, the study of light at the nanoscale: “I remember learning that certain nanomaterials could act, essentially, as light shrinking machines,” she recalls, “and I thought the field was fascinating.”
Applying her nanophotonic research to global health, sustainability, and biochemistry, the materials scientist also earned a (“fun”) post-doc in chemistry (“that was outside my comfort zone”) while spearheading experiments that manipulated light at the atomic scale.
She started at Stanford as a professor and researcher in 2010, aged 28, and her star continued to rise—she was the first to show visible light bending backwards and made fundamental discoveries in physics.
She went on to win a slew of awards—including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from Obama, a Moore Inventor Fellowship, and the Alan T. Waterman Award—and help Stanford modernize its shared research facilities across facilities
Her multidisciplinary research group, The D-Lab, “aspires to build a world where diseases like cancer, tuberculosis, and Alzheimer’s are detected and cured with light.”
The D-Lab developed the world’s first nanostructured silicon chips, termed ‘high-Q metasurfaces” (Q-stands for quality factor)that amplify and direct light with exceptional precision. Their applicationsspan environmental DNA detection, metabolite tracking, sustainable chemistry, and photonic devices for computing and quantum applications.
If all that wasn’t impressive enough, Jen also acts as Deputy Director at Q-Next, a national organization leading the development of quantum information science research and computing. And she’s an entrepreneur.
Her company, Pumpkinseed Technologies, is advancing these silicon chips forhigh-resolution, high-throughput protein sequencing. Pumpkinseed’s platform offers higher resolution and sensitivity than traditional mass spectrometry, enabling ‘light-speed reads’ of the proteome for faster diagnostics and therapeutic discovery.
“For AI to revolutionize health and medicine, it needs to be equipped with data about the functional molecules of biology. Proteins are among the key molecules of biological functions, and yet there’s a huge shortage of protein sequence data,” she explains, adding that the new platform is higher resolution, higher throughput, and “more sensitive than mass spec[trometry imaging], which has been the gold standard for half a century.”
Making waves in the scientific community with its novel approach of optimizing nanophotonic sensor chips, Pumpkinseed’s “light-speed reads of the proteome [will] potentially revolutionize our understanding of cellular processes, and open new avenues for therapeutic development.”
At the end of the day, she says, “it’s about how we can use and control light to help illuminate insights into health and sustainability.”
“For the most part, light is very inefficient at interacting with molecules,” Jen explains, “so we’ve engineered with materials that improve that interaction, [in order to] not only get new data about biochemical and biological systems, but to start to control those molecules, too. We’re using light like a chemical scalpel, so you can structure what molecules are doing.”
Earlier this year, for instance, she and her team at Stanford developed some of the first sensors for mapping out the mechanical forces between cells. And so now Jen is experimenting in embryogenesis—a complex biological process of rapid cell division, enlargement, and differentiation.
”What are the forces of certain embryos and how do those forces change during the process of going from a few-celled organism to a wholly-formed human, or zebra fish?” she wonders with a smile.
Applications on the atomic scale
Beyond the applications of light emission, Jen adds that she’s excited about nanoscale light absorption—tuning metallic and semiconducting nanostructures and using them to sculpt chemical reactions. Her lab also uses atomic scale characterization techniques to study the pathways of emissive nanomaterials.
“We routinely use environmental transmission electron microscopy to study how optical materials are changing at the nano and atomic scale in different reaction conditions,” she explains. These experiments enable direct and dynamic visualization of near-atomic-scale structural changes during nanomaterial operation.
For instance, her lab discovered how photocatalysts for ammonia synthesis restructure during reactions, changing both the active sites and their peak absorption wavelengths. “We can achieve these insights at the single particle level, and by directing imaging coupled with optical and electron spectroscopy. So, at their core, these methods provide a high-resolution lens that can resolve never-before-seen details about nanomaterials operation, with the goal of using these insights to improve structure and function.”
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The truth is out there
Each spring, Professor Jen teaches a freshmen course called ‘Science of the Impossible.’ Designed for non-science majors, it’s “about the history of science, how discoveries emerged and where the future might be headed.”
Jen thinks it’s useful for students (not to mention the general population) to understand how, in many cases, impactful scientific discoveries come about “not from people having an eye towards an application, but from playing around in the lab.”
“This class is fun because we get to brainstorm what the future of science might be, and the political or ethical implications of that science on society.
It’s about understanding the trajectory and arc of science.”
As for her contribution, Jen is currently “extremely excited” about surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) methods, assisted by machine learning models.
“We’re entering a regime—especially with artificial intelligence and compute (including our ability to do quantum calculations) —where we can take a given Raman signal and interpret it to discern what molecular components might be, without having seen it before.
Tuberculosis, for instance, can take weeks to culture for antibiotic matching. Jen sees a world where Raman-based sensing could identify and prescribe the correct antibiotics on the same day that infection is confirmed.
This biosensing side has many exciting applications around the corner, Jen adds: Whether it’s looking at harmful algae blooms, or biothreat detection, or waste water monitoring, or examining cell phenotypes for predicting immunotherapy outcomes . . .
I want to believe 🛸
Looking towards the future, Jen is motivated by all we have yet to discover. “There are many unsolved problems, and researchers need to generate new data at the frontiers of science to address them.”
We will need all hands on deck to solve them, she adds, “whether it is related to health and sustainability, or more energy-efficient computing, or faster space travel . . .
I would encourage people to exercise their imagination. AI will not do all the hard work for us. If anything, it will be a great tool to brainstorm ideas with but it won’t provide us with the answers. Humans still have a lot of work to do.”
Essentially, she concludes, there’s not much difference between the arts and the sciences.
“The creative spark is so important . . . we’re in such an interesting time in history. There is so much we still have to accomplish, so much that is unexplored. I think we’ve only tapped the surface.”
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