The Politecnico di Milano is taking part in the MetaCARS project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the 2026 Advanced Grants programme. The project is coordinated by the Institut Fresnel of the CNRS in Marseille and involves the research group led by Michele Celebrano, a lecturer in the Department of Physics.
The aim of the project is to develop an innovative technology to observe and identify individual molecules in record time. The most advanced optical techniques currently available do not, in fact, allow individual molecules to be detected and tracked on timescales shorter than a millisecond – a limitation that makes it difficult to study extremely rapid chemical processes and hinders applications such as high-speed molecular sequencing.
By combining non-linear Raman spectroscopy with nanophotonics, MetaCARS aims to create a new molecular detection platform capable of identifying and monitoring individual molecules within a few microseconds, increasing the speed of analysis by more than a thousand times compared with currently available technologies.
The expected results could have a significant impact across various fields, from the discovery of new drugs to the study of enzymatic processes, from genomic screening to the development of increasingly advanced approaches to personalised medicine.
As part of the project, Michele Celebrano will oversee the research activities of the team at the Politecnico di Milano, whilst Attilio Zilli, a researcher in the Department of Physics, will lead the design, fabrication and characterisation of specialised optical nanostructures and metasurfaces. These devices will be essential for amplifying the optical signals underpinning the detection system developed by MetaCARS.
The funding forms part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and has been awarded to 319 senior researchers, totalling 838 million euros. The Advanced Grants will enable the development of ambitious research projects with the potential to generate significant advances in their respective scientific fields.