Education
Brief Bio
Steve Smith received the PhD in Applied Physics from the University of Michigan in 1996. He was a postdoc and member of technical staff at the US Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory from 1996-2005, when he became a faculty member in Nanoscience and Nanoengineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (South Dakota Mines). He served as a rotating program officer for the Biomaterials Program in the Division of Materials Research, Mathematics and Physical Sciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation from 2019-2021. He is currently Professor and head of Nanoscience and Biomedical Engineering at South Dakota Mines.
Research Expertise
My expertise focuses on exploiting light-matter interactions with nanomaterials using optical imaging and spectroscopy methods. Current interests include spectrally-resolved nonlinear optical microscopy with nanoscale spatial resolution, including multiphoton imaging of plasmonic meta-surfaces, low dimensional quantum materials, upconverting nanomaterials, multiphoton microscopy and correlative optical, atomic force and electron microscopy of bio-nanomaterials.
Methods and Techniques established in lab:
- Microscopy - Single Molecule, FLIM, SPIM, custom multi-photon and spectral imaging, correlative AFM / Fluorescence imaging.
- Spectroscopy- Energy and time resolved, time correlated single photon counting lifetime, multiple tunable laser sources.
- Image analytics - computational tools and their application in quantifying 3D image data.
Teaching
My courses are leveraged by my research expertise. I teach courses in photonics (NANO 404/504), spectroscopy (NANO 714), optical and electronic properties of nanomaterials (NANO 702), and computational analysis of electromagnetic wave propagation in periodic structures (NANO 604).