Dr. Yingke Wu
Yingke received his Bachelor degree from Hebei University of Technology (Tianjin, China) in Polymer Materials and Engineering in 2014, and his Master degree from Sichuan University (Sichuan, China) in Polymer Science and Engineering in 2017. In the same year, he joined the group of Tanja Weil at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPIP) and completed his PhD in 2021. After a short stint as a postdoctoral researcher, he was promoted to group leader in 2022 and leads the Nanodiamond group at the MPIP. In 2023, he received Functional Diamond 2022 Young Scientist Award.
Yingke is involved in the national cross-disciplinary collaborative research center (CRC1279) that aims to develop quantum sensing technology to understand the peptide-cell interaction quantitatively inside living cells.
Research Interest
Understanding Life in Its Native Nanoenvironment
Living cells function through tightly interconnected biochemical reactions, physical forces, and transient molecular interactions at the nanoscale, creating heterogeneous environments with dynamic pH, radical, and, temperature gradients. Conventional imaging and biochemical tools often cannot capture these parameters in the ‘warm, wet, and noisy’ cellular context, where signals are weak, environments fluctuate rapidly, and many molecules are short-lived.
The Nanodiamond Group develops quantum-based sensing technologies that overcome these limitations by exploiting the unique spin properties of colour centers such as Nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) in nanodiamonds (NDs), the spin properties are retained even in the complex intracellular environment, enabling quantitative measurement of temperature, pH, and radical species under physiological conditions. By integrating quantum optics with chemical functionalization and cell biology, the group creates nanosensors capable of probing and manipulating biological processes with unprecedented resolution. These advances allow exploration of how reactive intermediates govern immune activation, metabolic adaptation, and radical stress responses, exemplifying the group’s vision of using molecular design and advanced characterization to understand and control biological complexity with quantum precision.
Key achievements: we have mapped intracellular radical formation and pH, resolved nanoscale thermal gradients, and uncovered radical-mediated mechanisms of immune activation distinct from classical heat-shock pathways; achieved bottom-up synthesis of ultrasmall molecular nanodiamonds (~3 nm) with controlled defect incorporation and surface chemistry.
Selected Publications