Dr. Marie-Christine Daniel
University of Maryland Balitmore County
Friday, November 20, 2026
12:00 Noon
Meyerhoff Chemistry BuildingRoom 120
Host: Dr. Brian Cullum
“From Cancer Therapeutics to Photonics: The Power of Gold Nanostructures”
The functional properties of gold nanostructures depend fundamentally on their physical geometry and surface chemistry. In the Daniel Lab, we leverage our dual control over shape and coating to design tailor-made nanomaterials for applications ranging from targeted therapeutics to novel optical devices. In this talk, I will present our recent strategies for synthesizing and functionalizing gold nanostructures across two main avenues: drug delivery and advanced metamaterials. For drug delivery, we utilize spherical gold nanoparticles as well as gold nanorattles functionalized with dendrons to enhance chemotherapeutic efficacy. The dendrons serve a critical dual role, providing steric stability while drastically increasing drug-loading capacity—achieving up to 1,000 docetaxel, 2,000 doxorubicin, or 650 cisplatin molecules per nanostructure. These functionalized nanocarriers demonstrate potent cytotoxicity against metastatic PC3 prostate cancer cells. For optical metamaterials, we exploit gold nanobipyramids coupled with CdSe/CdS core/shell quantum dots to probe room-temperature plasmon-exciton interactions. By selectively linking quantum dot ligands to the tip ligands of the nanobipyramids, we engineered distinct trimer architectures (nanobipyramid–quantum dot–nanobipyramid). Single-particle scattering and photoluminescence measurements confirm active plasmon-exciton coupling in these assemblies, opening up new avenues for nanoscale light manipulation.