Dorit Hanein's research is at the interfaces between structural biology, cell biology, systems biology, and engineering science. She is leading efforts in combining light microscopy with cellular tomography to permit the placement of dynamics multimolecular protein complexes into their functional context in mammalian cells. Through these efforts, she made seminal contributions to our knowledge of the structure, assembly and regulation of the actin cytoskeleton and its associated macromolecular assemblies, to the development of techniques and protocols for correlative light and in-situ cellular tomography of protein structures in intact hydrated mammalian cells at cryogenic temperatures, and to the evolution of quantitative cryogenic electron microscopy.