Pincet uses optical-tweezer single-molecule force spectroscopy and single-molecule imaging to quantify the energetics and kinetics of protein-membrane interactions underlying vesicle docking and fusion (synaptotagmin/SNARE machinery), and — as a 2020 ERC Synergy laureate — is testing whether the secretory pathway is organized as self-assembling 2D liquid-crystalline protein domains. The lab combines force-clamp optical tweezers with real-time single-molecule imaging for unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution of individual protein-membrane binding events.