 The Department of Biophysical Chemistry, directed by Ernst Bamberg, studies the function of these proteins in native or reconstituted membranes by electrophysiological and spectroscopic methods.Since 2013, the institute hosts the Department of Theoretical Biophysics, directed by Gerhard Hummer focusing on development and implementation of broad range of computational and theoretical methods to bridge fundamental physics, chemistry and biology of molecular systems.In the Department of Molecular Sociology integrative cellular structural biology is studied by cryo-electron microscopy, biochemical and mass spectroscopic methods applied to nuclear pores, macromolecular machines that are responsible for the communication between the cell nucleus and the cytoplasm.