Boecking leads the Molecular Machines Group and is acting director of the EMBL Australia Node in Single Molecule Science. The group reconstitutes molecular machines — clathrin coat disassembly, HIV capsid assembly and uncoating, pore-forming toxins — and watches them work one molecule at a time by TIRF, interferometric scattering (mass photometry) and fluorescence fluctuation methods, resolving short-lived intermediates that ensemble kinetics averages into invisibility. He trained originally in surface chemistry and biosensors with Gooding, which gives the group unusual competence in engineering the surfaces these assays run on. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the argument for single-molecule methods over ensemble ones is identical to the argument for pushing NV sensing below its pT/sqrt(Hz) ensemble regime: the interesting biology lives in heterogeneity and in transient states that averaging destroys. Strong methodological neighbour for a quantum-biosensing candidate.
Dickinson's group develops advanced optical microscopy methods for biological and biomedical imaging. Research directions: (1) STORM super-resolution microscopy — stochastic optical reconstruction for nanoscale imaging of biological structures at ~20 nm lateral resolution; imaging cytoskeletal dynamics, cellular organelles, and pathological structures; (2) Optical coherence tomography (OCT) — depth-resolved, label-free imaging for biomedical diagnostics (retinal, cardiovascular tissues); (3) Laser speckle imaging — blood flow and perfusion measurements in tissues; (4) Multiphoton microscopy — second harmonic generation (SHG) and two-photon for collagen structure imaging in connective tissues and cancer. Part of the Manchester Photon Science Institute biophotonics theme.
Hylkje Geertsema uses single-molecule super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (TIRF, SMLM, PALM/STORM) to study DNA replication dynamics. Her lab visualises and quantifies individual replication proteins at replication forks in living cells to understand the kinetics and fidelity of DNA copying. Research focuses on measuring spatiotemporal dynamics of protein assemblies during DNA metabolism with nanometre resolution.
Hinde is a fluorescence-fluctuation physicist embedded in cell biology: she uses pair-correlation function analysis, number-and-brightness, phasor-FLIM and FRET to read out chromatin compaction, protein-chromatin binding dynamics and nucleocytoplasmic transport in living nuclei, at spatial and temporal scales that conventional imaging averages away. The programme is a technique-pushing one — the emphasis is on extracting nanoscale structural information from photon statistics rather than on brute-force localisation — and it is now being coupled to quantum sensing through her QUBIC investigatorship, where the goal is to combine fluorescence readouts with NV-based magnetic and spin-noise contrast in the same cell. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — her role in QUBIC is to supply the cell-biological questions and the correlative optical readouts that make pT/sqrt(Hz)-class ensemble sensing biologically interpretable. Preferred attribute present: lifetime- and orientation-resolved methods pushing past the usual resolution limits.
Lee leads TheLeeLab at Cambridge Chemistry, focused on developing cutting-edge biophysical single-molecule fluorescence methods to answer fundamental biological questions. Two major thrusts: (1) 3D super-resolution microscopy instrument development — the lab pioneered single-molecule light field microscopy (SMLFM) using a microlens array in the back focal plane, achieving ~10× speed improvement over double-helix PSF for volumetric imaging; also develops vortex light field microscopy (VLFM) for simultaneous 25 nm spatial / 3 nm spectral precision; (2) Biological applications — studying T-cell receptor signalling at the nanoscale (distribution of TCRs, microvilli-mediated close contacts), histone assembly during DNA replication and repair in fission yeast, and PSD-95 nanoclusters in mouse brain using 3D SMLM. A job posting (PDRA) was active in 2025 for T-cell imaging work with super-resolution and Fourier light-field microscopy.