Professor Justin Benesch, Tutorial Fellow in Physical Chemistry, is to receive the University’s Commercial Impact Award for the “Development and commercial implementation of a new way of measuring mass: mass photometry.”

He will receive the award along with his colleague in Chemistry, Professor Philipp Kukura, from the MPLS (Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences) Division. They formed a spin-out company, Refeyn Ltd, in 2018 to bring mass photometry, a new measurement approach that “weighs molecules with light”, to researchers in academia and industry. Refeyn Ltd now employs 30 people, and has tens of instruments around the world.

Justin’s research has garnered an international reputation for innovative biophysical chemistry approaches based on combining mass measurement with other experimental methods, simulations, and quantitative thermodynamic and kinetic analyses. This has allowed him and his group to change thinking as to how proteins assemble, interact, and even evolve.

Professor Justin Benesch has been awarded fellowships from the Medical Research Council and Royal Society. Justin has been recognised by the Cell Stress Society International with the Alfred Tissières Award, the Howard Prize Lecture from the Biophysical Sciences Institute at Durham, and the Norman Heatley Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2019.

Published: 6 March 2020

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