Backman develops nanoscale-sensitive optical biophotonics -- including chromatin-sensitive partial-wave spectroscopic (PWS) microscopy, which is label-free and detects mass-density fluctuations of chromatin packing domains below the diffraction limit -- and combines it with super-resolution imaging, electron tomography, and computational genome modeling in his nano-ChIA platform. The lab links this multi-scale nanoscale chromatin imaging to gene-expression physics and has translated the technology into cancer early-detection diagnostics through several spinout companies.