The Walker Group

Prof. Walker is the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Biointerfaces. He received his B.A. in Chemistry and Mathematics from Bowdoin College in 1985, and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 1991. In 1993, he became an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and was later promoted to associate professor in 2000. Walker joined the University of Toronto in 2005 as the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Microscopy and Nanophotonic Devices.

Walker’s research initially focused on ultrafast solvation dynamics and charge transfer in water. He later opened a new area of research in scanned probe microscopy of surfaces and single molecules at surfaces, making a breakthrough, fundamental measurement regarding hydrophobic hydration. Combining optics and mechanics, Walker has developed techniques for chemical imaging and mechanical mapping with nanometric resolution. Moreover, he has created a tool to rapidly acquire infrared spectra on the nanoscale, which he is using to probe surface phonon polaritons in low-dimensional materials. Finally, Walker is using metal nanoparticles as surface-enhanced Raman scattering beacons for the multimodal imaging of cancer cells and structural investigation of proteins related to Alzheimer’s disease.