Professor Valentine Vullev and collaborators, Bahman Anvari (Bioengineering), Russ Hille (Biochemistry), Mihri Ozkan (Electrical Engineering)and Jerry Schultz (Bioengineering) have received $400,000 to acquire a transient absorption spectrometer (TAS). The collaborative effort brings together investigators from six science and engineering departments at University of California, Riverside (UCR) with common interests in characterizing ultrafast kinetics in biological and bioinspired systems and materials. The group plans to use the TAS system to study a broad variety of phenomena. TAS is a non-invasive technique that eliminates the need for fluorescence signatures of targeted structures and allows for real-time observations of events that can be as fast as 140 femtoseconds. UCR’s plan to make the TAS a shared experimental resource represents an innovative approach that will facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration, novel training opportunities, and valuable discoveries.