ProfessorVitali Averbukh

I am a theoretical physicist working across many-body quantum dynamics, attosecond science and biomolecular mass spectrometry. My research focuses on developing computational methods to extract structural and dynamical information from complex many-body systems, ranging from ultrafast electron dynamics in atoms and molecules to fragmentation processes in biomolecules.

A central theme of my work is the identification and exploitation of correlations in complex systems, as well as theoretical development and modelling of spectroscopic methods of detection of such correlations. In the context of attosecond physics, this has led, for example, to the formulation of a Bell test of electron-ion entanglement on photoionisation. This work builds on the development of advanced first-principles electronic structure and dynamics methods, including B-spline ADC and Fano-ADC, in my group. Recently, I have led the computational component of the development of the 2D partial-covariance mass spectrometry (2D-PC-MS), a new analytical framework that enables the extraction of fragment–fragment correlations from tandem mass spectrometry data.

2D-PC-MS provides a fundamentally new approach to analysing complex fragmentation spectra, enabling high-confidence de novo peptide sequencing, precise localisation of post-translational modifications and robust top-down proteomics analysis. This work opens new possibilities for addressing key challenges in proteomics, particularly in the study of complex and modified proteomes.

This research is being translated into practical tools through HaptoMass, a spin-out from Imperial College London, which develops software for advanced analysis of biomolecular mass spectrometry data. The aim is to enable direct insight into complex biological systems in both academic and industrial settings, with applications including antibody sequencing, biomarker discovery, and top-down proteomics.