Research
Biology is often captured as a sequence of static snapshots. We seek to understand the transient states between those snapshots: where they arise, how long they persist, and how they shape cell behaviour.
Scientific premise
Cells continuously reorganise molecular interactions, signalling assemblies, organelles and mechanical structures. These changes can be local, short-lived and heterogeneous, yet they determine how cells sense their environment and choose a response.
Our research asks how such states can be observed directly in living systems and connected to mechanism. Tool development follows from that question, rather than serving as an endpoint of its own.
What we ask
Immune signalling
Immune responses emerge from signals assembled and remodelled in specific cellular locations. We investigate how molecular activity is coordinated in macrophages, podosomes and immune synapses, and how local organisation shapes cell behaviour.
Neuronal nuclear states
Neuronal activation reaches beyond the membrane and cytoplasm to reshape molecular organisation inside the nucleus. We study how phosphorylation and biomolecular condensation influence nuclear speckles, nucleolar organisation and other dynamic nuclear states.
Mechanobiology
Cells experience force through adhesion, cytoskeletal tension, membrane deformation and the surrounding matrix. We study how these physical inputs reorganise molecular states and propagate from force-bearing structures toward cellular decisions.
How we answer
Each capability addresses a different limit of observation. Their integration enables measurements that are spatially resolved, time-sensitive, molecularly specific and quantitative.
See
Engineered proteins that turn a conformational change into a change in fluorescence — read out by FRET, fluorescence lifetime, or single-molecule tracking in living cells.
Steer
Light-controlled switches that recruit a protein to a chosen location, or turn its activity on and off — in seconds, and only where we illuminate.
Observe
Imaging systems built in-house for live, quantitative measurement — single-molecule, light-sheet, fluorescence-lifetime and structured illumination — together with the analysis that turns a recording into numbers.
Design
We design biosensors, actuators and binders computationally, then test them directly in living cells — closing the loop between what a measurement requires and what a molecule can do.
How we work
Follow processes as they unfold instead of inferring dynamics from fixed endpoints.
Connect observation to mechanism through controlled changes in molecular state, location and timing.
Relate molecular events to subcellular organisation, cellular behaviour and system-level responses.
Integrated pipeline
The platform is described at the level of scientific capability; specific unpublished implementations remain confidential.
Define the biological state to measure.
Observe that state in living systems.
Extract patterns and model transitions.
Test mechanisms in relevant systems.