Justus C. Ndukaife is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt University specializing in nanophotonics and microfluidics — the science of manipulating and visualizing matter at the nanoscale. His research led him to develop an optical nanotweezer-based detection system capable of visualizing individual nanoplastic particles in real time, at concentrations roughly 10,000 times lower than industry-standard mass spectrometry can detect. The system can even identify a particle’s polymer type, tracing it back to its source — a soda bottle, a bottle cap, food packaging.

His path to this work began not in the lab but at home: after becoming a father, he read that babies could be ingesting millions of microplastic particles a day from heated plastic bottles, and set out to find out how much was true. That question became his book, Unmasking Nanoplastics: Measuring the World’s Invisible Plastic Problem, and a technology platform now being explored for accurately measuring nanoplastics in drinking water for water utilities and in human samples in clinical settings.

His research has been recognized with the NIH MIRA R35 Outstanding Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the ONR Young Investigator Award, and other honors.