Christopher D. Geddes

Dr Chris D. Geddes, Ph.D., FRSC, Professor, has extensive experience in fluorescence spectroscopy and Plasmonics, publishing over 400 peer-reviewed papers (h-index: 74), > 35 books; his work being cited approximately 12,000 times to date in the research literature.

Dr Geddes is internationally known in fluorescence and plasmonics and his laboratory is widely attributed to the development of the Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence (MEF), Fluorophore Induced Plasmonic Current (FIPC) and related plasmon-fluorescence technologies, securing in excess of $25 million in recent years to pursue his research aspirations. He is the editor-in-chief of the three major peer reviewed Springer/Nature scientific journals, namely the Journal of Fluorescence, the Plasmonics Journal and Advanced Metamaterials, Dr Geddes founding both the Plasmonics journal and Advanced Metamaterials. Dr Geddes is also the founding editor of several book series, namely: Who’s Who in Fluorescence, Annual Reviews in Fluorescence, the Annual Reviews in Plasmonics and the Molecular BioPhysics series.

Dr Geddes is internationally known in fluorescence and plasmonics and his laboratory is widely attributed to the development of the Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence (MEF), Fluorophore Induced Plasmonic Current (FIPC) and related plasmon-fluorescence technologies, securing in excess of $25 million in recent years to pursue his research aspirations. He is the editor-in-chief of the three major peer reviewed Springer/Nature scientific journals, namely the Journal of Fluorescence, the Plasmonics Journal and Advanced Metamaterials, Dr Geddes founding both the Plasmonics journal and Advanced Metamaterials. Dr Geddes is also the founding editor of several book series, namely: Who’s Who in Fluorescence, Annual Reviews in Fluorescence, the Annual Reviews in Plasmonics and the Molecular BioPhysics series.

Dr Geddes is Director of the Institute of Fluorescence, a department within UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County), which focuses on the nano-bio-technological applications of fluorescence. Dr Geddes has been a permanent member of the NIH’s EBIT R01 study section (2007-2012) and chaired the NIH’s Analytical and BioAnalytical SBIR study section from ~ 2004-2009. Dr Geddes is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and the Institute of Physics, (FInstPhys). Dr Geddes holds > 130 patents in the fields of fluorescence and plasmonics and his roles and interactions with industry have created enterprise value in excess of $100 Million dollars today.  Dr Geddes has launched numerous companies throughout his career, most recently Lyse-It LLC (www.lyse-it.com) as well being an angel investor in a great many more. Dr Geddes has commercialized > 350 products to date.  In 2011, Professor Geddes was honored by the Maryland House of Delegates in Annapolis, (House Resolution #326), for his outstanding contributions to education, biotechnology, economic development and innovation and again in 2019 for his outstanding contributions to minority and women education and for mentoring the next generation of scientists. Dr Geddes is also a co-founder and chair of the popular Bio-X society conference series, which holds biologically focused conferences around the world annually.

Dr. Chris D. Geddes Personal Homepage: http://chrisgeddes.com/index.html

Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisDGeddes

Follow him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-chris-d-geddes-129929341/

Dr Geddes launches a new Springer book serial, Molecular BioPhysics: Molecular BioPhysics

Research Interests

• Physical Chemistry/Spectroscopy: The discovery and development of new fluorescence-plasmonic based technologies such as Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence (MEF) and Fluorophore-Induced Plasmonic Current (FIPC) generation. MEF has been used for many biological, biochemical and clinical sensing applications, such as for the detection of dangerous pathogens such as Anthrax;  in clinical studies/trials for the detection of non-typhoidal salmonella in children and for the rapid detection and quantification of sexually transmitted infections (3 clinical studies performed to date).
• Spectroscopy and Analytical: The development of Plasmonic electricity / current (discovered by our group) for solar power applications as well as for analytical sensing.
• Materials Science: The synthesis / development of fluorescent carbon nanodots for analytical sensing and antibacterial applications.
• Biochemistry: The development of new Lysing technologies, to lyse cells, organisms and fragment DNA / proteins into “tunable” distributions of sizes. We have developed single and multi-sample lysing approaches allowing users rapid sample preparation, typically within 30 secs. These new biomolecule fragmentation approaches have been used in several clinical applications to date, allowing patient samples to be readily “prepared” for DNA/Protein both identification and quantification.

Recent Publications

Distance Dependence of Fluorophore-Induced Plasmonic Current. . Daniel Pierce, Clifton Cunningham, Sean Villaver, Abdullah Bajwah, Samuel Oluwarotimi and Chris D. Geddes. Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2025, 129, 11031-11038. Link

Fluorophore-Induced Plasmonic Current from Copper and Silver Mixed-Metal Films. Daniel Pierce, Clifton Cunningham, Sean Villaver, Abdullah Bajwah, Samuel Oluwarotimi and Chris D. Geddes, Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2025, 129, 11458-11467. Link

Fluorophore-Induced Plasmonic Current Generation from Copper Nanoparticle Films. Daniel R. Pierce, Lahari Saha, and Chris D. Geddes, ACS Omega 2024, 9, 23, 25181–25188. Link

Fluorophore-induced Plasmonic Current Generation from Aluminum Nanoparticle Films. D.R. Pierce, M. Bobbin and Chris D. Geddes, Journal of Physical Chemistry, 127, 1126-1134, 2023.Link

Plasmonic Electricity II: The Effect of Particle Size, Solvent Permittivity, Applied Voltage, and Temperature on Fluorophore-Induced Plasmonic Current Joshua Moskowitz, Rashad Sindi, and Chris D. Geddes, J. Phys. Chem. C 2020, 124, 10, 5780–5788 Link

Antimicrobial carbon nanodots: photodynamic inactivation and dark antimicrobial effects on bacteria by brominated carbon nanodots, Rachael Knoblauch, Amanda Harvey, Estelle Ra, Ken M. Greenberg, Judy Lau, Elizabeth Hawkins, and Chris D. Geddes, Nanoscale, 2021,13, 85-99 Link

Elucidation of a non-thermal mechanism for DNA/RNA fragmentation and protein degradation when using Lyse-It,  T. M. Santaus, K. Greenberg, P. Suri and Chris D. Geddes, PLOS ONE, 14, 12, E0225475, 2019. Link

Honors and Awards

2019 – Honored by Maryland House of Delegates in Annapolis in a citation, for outstanding contributions to minority and women education and for mentoring the next generation of scientists.

2015 – Awarded for technology innovation at UMBC’s innovators luncheon by the USM chancellor, Dr Bob Caret.

2015 – Innovator of the Year

2013 – Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, FRSC

2013 – Innovator of the year

2012 – Fellow Institute of Physics

2011 – IoF and Professor Geddes honored by Maryland House of Delegates in Annapolis, House Resolution #326, for outstanding contributions to education, biotechnology and innovation.

2010 – Innovator of the year award

2008 – Innovator of the year award

Course Profiles

• Chem 303: Physical Chemistry for the Biological Sciences
• Chem 401: Statistical Thermodynamics
• Chem 467: Analytical Chemistry
• Chem 490/684: Fluorescence Spectroscopy
• Chem 490/684: Quantum Chemistry and Spectroscopy
• Chem 490/684: Advanced Spectroscopy
• Chem 714: Ethics in Research
• Chem 351L: Organic Chemistry Lab