Ananthanarayanan was awarded the Royal Microscopical Society Life Sciences Award in 2025 for the use of novel microscopies in cell biology. Her group images individual motor proteins — dynein, kinesin — and the mitochondria they transport, in living cells, at single-molecule sensitivity, combining light-sheet and TIRF-class imaging with particle tracking to ask how organelle positioning and mitochondrial dynamics are controlled. The methodological emphasis is on getting single-molecule sensitivity inside a live cell rather than in vitro, which is the hard version of the problem. 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 — this is the closest thing at UNSW to a biological end-user for an in-cell quantum sensor: the mitochondrial systems she studies are precisely where NV nanodiamond thermometry and free-radical relaxometry at pT/sqrt(Hz) have been aimed, and she has the live-cell imaging infrastructure to validate any such measurement independently.

Cui develops vertical nanopillar electrode and optical sensor arrays that interface with the cell membrane to probe curvature-sensitive signaling, and pairs them with 3D super-resolution (single-molecule localization) microscopy to resolve nanoscale protein organization at the nano-bio interface with 10-20 nm precision, well past the optical diffraction limit.

Fletcher combines optical and force microscopy (AFM, optical tweezers) with purified-protein and single-cell assays to measure the mechanics of cell movement and immune-cell activation, and has also developed low-cost imaging instrumentation (foldscopes, phone-based microscopes) for global health.