The US Department of Energy has provided three years of funding for the development and testing of a microscope based on coherent Raman scattering and highly sensitive coherence-gated detection that will enable our collaborators to better understand metabolic interactions between plant roots and bacteria that fix nitrogen for them. Professor Cicerone is the lead PI on the project that includes co-PIs Lily Cheung (ChBE), Francisco Robles (BME) and Joel Kostka (Biology)