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Fluorescence for Imaging, Catalysis & Sensing Lab (FICS Lab)

Where fluorescence meets catalysis and sensing

Group in 12/2025

The FICS Lab is led by Dr. Xiangcheng Sun and located in Institute Hall at RIT. The lab is focused on the development of nanomaterials for sensing, imaging and catalysis applications through investigating the spectroscopy properties in both ensemble and single-molecule level. Our goal is to explore new approaches for chemical and biomedical monitoring and chemical processing. 

Lab Updates/News

  • 11/2025: Nazanin attended the 2025 AIChE Annual Meeting in Boston, and gave two talks on our research discoveries. In addition, she was selected as a finalist for Graduate Student Awards (Electronics and Photonic Materials) at the meeting. 

  • 09/2025: Xiangcheng named a Scialog Fellow in Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials. 

  • 08/2025: Xiangcheng participated in the Rising Stars of Analytical Chemistry seminar during ACS Fall 2025.

  • 04/2025: Our group made an exhibit on "Seeing Science in Color" at the Imagine RIT festival.  

  • 04/2025: Wendy Boice received Undergraduate Research Achievement Award at the 2025 ACS Rochester Collegiate Research Symposium. 

  • 04/2025: Xiangcheng is featured as New Principal Investigator from Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). Please see the blog post.

  • Meet Xiangcheng Sun: New Principal Investigator03/2025: Koki's first manuscript is accepted and published in Materials Advances. Congrats! Materials Advances, 2025, DOI: 10.1039/D5MA00021A. 

  • 09/2024: Koki, Mason and Brian gave oral and poster presentations at NYSP2I Student and Faculty Research Program Symposium in Troy, NY. 

  • students presentations

    05/2024: Xiangcheng receives one research award sponsored by NYSP2I (funded by NYSDEC). Look forward to having several undergraduates on this project in the lab soon. 

  • 03/2024: Our lab receives one FEAD grant. Congrats. 

  • 01/2024: Our research is featured as a journal cover and published in ACS Applied Optical Materials. Please see more information on our cover https://pubs.acs.org/toc/aaoma6/2/1. 

    01/2024: Nazanin's first research paper is accepted for publication in ACS Applied Optical Materials. Congratulations, Nazanin. 

    11/2023: Xiangcheng was invited to write a Behind-the-Paper post at Springer Nature, Chemistry Community. The post appears "Single-molecule fluorescence imaging and sequencing of single synthetic polymers".

    11/2023: Xiangcheng's paper "Optical sequencing of single synthetic polymers" is finally published online on Nature Chemistry. 

    08/2023: Koki Sekioka joins RIT as a PhD student in our lab. Welcome. He obtained his BS degree in Biomedical Chemistry from Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.

  • 06/2023: Xiangcheng's (co-1st) paper is accepted by Nature Chemistry. Congrats. 

  • 05/2023: Congratulations to Allora on the acceptance of her paper on ferrous ions detection using green fluorescent carbon dots by Talanta Open. 

  • 01/2023: We welcome Rex Bartolini, a first-year Ph.D. student to join us for rotations. Rex obtained his BS/MS degree from our department at RIT.

  • 01/2023: Our invited review paper on Fluorescent Carbon Dots for Super-Resolution Microscopy is accepted and published in Materials.

  • 10/2022: Dr. Sun is awarded a grant from ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator to support the single-molecule catalysis work. Many thanks to ACS PRF for supporting our work. 

  • 09/2022: We welcome Nazanin Mosleh joining us for her PhD research. Nazanin obtained her MS degree in Inorganic Chemistry from Kharazmi University in Iran.  

  • 03/2022: Dr. Sun receives Grant Writers' Boot Camp See Funding.  

  • 03/2022: Dr. Sun is invited to give a talk in the Department of Chemistry at Xijiao Liverpool University via Zoom.  

  • 10/2021: Our first paper at RIT on glucose detection through SERS was accepted in Analytica Chmica Acta.

  • 08/2021: Dr. Sun joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at RIT and the lab opened.

We thank the following sponsors for supporing our research

NYSP2I   ACS PRF    RIT