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.

Barker leads the UCL Optomechanics Group, focusing on levitated nano/micro-oscillators in vacuum. Research directions: (1) Six-degree-of-freedom cooling — demonstrated simultaneous cavity cooling of all 6 DOF of a levitated nanoparticle (Nature Physics 2023, with Monteiro); (2) Sympathetic cooling of two nanoparticles via Coulomb interaction, squeezing transfer (Phys. Rev. Research 2023); (3) Dark matter searches — levitated nanoparticles as directional dark matter sensors sensitive to nuclear recoil and momentum transfer; QTFP-funded project 'Development of Levitated Quantum Optomechanical Sensors for Dark Matter Detection'; (4) Controlling mode orientations for directional force sensing near the quantum limit; (5) Quantum macroscopic superposition tests. Closely collaborates with Monteiro (theory), Bose (quantum entanglement tests), and Ghag (dark matter).

Berry studies rotary molecular motors, especially the bacterial flagellar motor, using novel forms of light microscopy (laser dark-field microscopy, back-focal-plane laser interferometry, optical and magnetic tweezers) to track sub-micron handles with nanometre and sub-millisecond resolution, revealing how these nanoscale engines are built, controlled and generate torque.

Bustamante is a founding figure of single-molecule biophysics, using optical and magnetic tweezers to measure the forces and torques generated by molecular motors (RNA polymerase, viral packaging motors, the ribosome) as they act on individual nucleoprotein complexes. The lab continues to push single-molecule force spectroscopy toward sub-piconewton, millisecond resolution to resolve mechanochemical intermediates invisible to bulk assays.

Uses optical and magnetic tweezers to study single-molecule mechanics and dynamics of molecular motors and nucleic-acid-processing enzymes with piconewton force resolution.

Experimental AMO physicist using ultracold atoms and optical lattices for quantum simulation and sensing. Directions: (1) Efimov and few-body physics in ultracold Cs and Cs-Li mixtures; (2) quantum phase transitions and strongly correlated quantum matter in optical lattices; (3) optical tweezer arrays for single-atom and single-molecule quantum simulation. Develops novel imaging techniques for in-situ atomic density measurements.

Nobel laureate Steven Chu's group spans laser cooling/trapping of atoms and single-molecule biophysics, using optical and magnetic tweezers and single-molecule fluorescence to study DNA/RNA folding, molecular motors, and signal transduction -- one of the earliest applications of AMO-derived single-particle measurement precision to living systems.

Crozier holds a joint Physics/Electrical Engineering chair and runs a nanophotonics laboratory spanning plasmonic and dielectric metasurfaces, on-chip optical trapping and manipulation of nanoparticles and cells, mid-infrared spectroscopy and detection with metasurface-enhanced and colloidal-nanocrystal devices, and light emission from 2D semiconductors. The unifying theme is engineering the local optical density of states to increase the signal available from a very small number of emitters or molecules. 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 plasmonic and dielectric antenna work is the same physics used to raise photon collection efficiency and hence the shot-noise floor of NV-ensemble magnetometers operating at pT/sqrt(Hz). Note: a substantial fraction of the group's output is device fabrication rather than sensitivity-limited measurement, which is a caveat against the stated preference.

Curmi is a structural and single-molecule biophysicist whose most-cited work is on the light-harvesting antenna proteins of cryptophyte algae, where he and collaborators reported long-lived electronic coherence at ambient temperature — one of the founding results of the quantum-biology field and still one of its most argued-over. His group determines the structures of these antenna complexes and engineers them, and separately works on protein-based molecular motors and on single-molecule fluorescence and FRET measurements of conformational dynamics. 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 — Curmi supplies the biological systems in which quantum coherence is actually claimed to matter; a pT/sqrt(Hz)-class spin sensor capable of watching radical-pair or exciton dynamics in situ would be aimed at exactly the questions his structures raise. Preferred attribute present: genuine quantum-biology substrate rather than a quantum-flavoured metaphor.

Gooding is one of the world's most-cited biosensor scientists (inaugural editor-in-chief of ACS Sensors) and runs a group of over thirty researchers spanning surface chemistry, electrochemistry and nanomedicine. The sensing programme that matters here is the move from ensemble to digital, single-molecule-resolved detection: nanoparticle-tethered electrochemical sensors in which single binding events are counted rather than averaged, nanopore blockade sensors for protein biomarkers such as PSA, amplification-free nucleic-acid detection, and antifouling surface chemistries that make any of this work in real biological fluid. He has a strong commercialisation record (AgaMatrix glucose sensors). 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 — his single-molecule-counting philosophy is the biosensing analogue of moving from a pT/sqrt(Hz) NV ensemble to single-spin detection: in both cases the sensitivity gain comes from resolving individual events rather than improving an averaged signal. He is also the obvious collaborator for anyone trying to functionalise a diamond or nanoparticle quantum sensor for a real analyte.