Benesch combines native mass spectrometry with mass photometry (developed jointly with Philipp Kukura) and other biophysical methods to determine how proteins, including molecular chaperones, assemble, interact and evolve, integrating single-molecule bioanalytical technologies for proteomics.

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.

Kukura invented mass photometry, a label-free interferometric-scattering microscopy technique that mass-images single biomolecules in solution with precision rivalling native mass spectrometry; his group continues to expand the technique's hardware, analysis (including deep learning) and range of biomolecular applications, in close collaboration with Justin Benesch.