Contributors to the Elements in Crystals Project
Thank you to all our contributors
The Elements in Crystals project was established by the British Crystallographic Association (BCA) and the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) and is a community led project with contributions from scientists worldwide. Below are some of the contributors to this project.
Contributors
Claire Murray is a chemist working at Diamond Light Source who is interested in biominerals and catalysis. She has developed and delivered events promoting science and diversity in science, and recently ran a national schools engagement project called Project M, which engaged students at over 100 schools with real science.
Amy Sarjeant works for Bristol-Myers Squibb as a Principal Scientist in X-ray Crystallography and is passionate about helping others to use structural data in education.
Suzanna Ward is the manager of the Cambridge Structural Database at the CCDC and is now responsible for team that creates the CSD and manages all the transactions that go on behind the scenes with depositors, authors, publishers, referees and requests for data as well as the online access and deposition
Caroline Davies-Brooks is a Scientific Editor at the CCDC. The editorial team is responsible for updating and curating the Cambridge Structural Database. In her spare time she volunteers as a STEM Ambassador in the local Cambridge area.
Pete Curran is a Ph.D. student at the CCDC in partnership with the University of Cambridge and UCB. His research project is exploring the pharmacophoric relationship between predicted hotspots and explored chemical space.
Helen Maynard-Casely works in Australia at their neutron source. She has been fascinated by patterns since her long journeys on the London Underground (check out the seat covers!) as a child, and that lead rather naturally to being a crystallographer later on. She particularly likes studying materials that make up the icy moons of our solar system.
Simon Coles leads the UK National Crystallography Service – a position that he worked up to since being an avid fossil and mineral collector as a child. He also now leads a facility that aims to make crystallographic and other scientific data more suitable for multidisciplinary research. As the BCA Council representative he is passionately involved in a range of education and outreach approaches aimed at similarly inspiring others.
Ben Littlefield is the Public Engagement Manger at UCL and strongly believes in the potential for chemistry (and STEM) to empower and change lives. He has been exploding, researching, freezing and bee-wrangling his way across festival stages and schools for the past 13 years all on a mission to spark delight and a lasting curiosity in science. In his spare time he collects fluorescent minerals, 3D prints zeolites and crystallographic space groups and hunts for uranium glass on beaches.
Jeff Lengyel is a US-based research and applications scientist at the CCDC. He is interested in functional crystalline materials, applying data science to materials research and the interface between art and science.
Tom Roseveare is a postdoctoral research associate at The University of Sheffield. His research focuses on testing crystalline materials for their guest inclusion properties. Tom enjoys nothing more than browsing the CSD for inspiration.
Cynthia Powell is a professor of Chemistry at Abilene Christian University. She is a passionate undergraduate teacher and mentor whose research interests include chemical education and organometallic synthesis.
Gregory Powell is a professor of Chemistry at Abilene Christian University. He is interested in the synthesis of transition metal clusters and metal-organic frameworks. He has been fascinated by crystallography since his graduate school days.
Ala’ Salem is a Ph.D. student at the University of Pécs. Her research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of multi-drug co-crystals. So if you think a single crystal is amazing, imagine what a co-crystal can do in terms of curing diseases and saving lives. When not doing pharmaceutical related research, Ala’ enjoys finding inspiration from the depiction of futuristic medicines in science fiction movies or trying to spot wild foxes.
Vedran Vuković is a Ph.D. student at the Université de Lorraine. He describes molecules in great detail, using precise crystallographic data as a starting point. He tries to find out what those descriptions can tell us about interactions between molecules. After lab hours, he enjoys reading about history and philosophy, learning foreign languages and practicing sports.
Emma McCabe is a senior lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Kent. She and her group work on the design and synthesis of new materials, and learning how to understand and optimise their properties.
Dr Madeleine Helliwell is a retired Senior Researcher at the University of Manchester, working in chemical crystallography.
Kam-Hung Low is a crystallographer at the University of Hong Kong. He is fascinated by 3D structure determinations.
Samuel Roberts is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge working under Prof. Sir Shankar Balasubramanian on the protein interactions of G-quadruplexes and their importance in biology. Sam completed his Ph.D. in 2018 on the origins of genetics on Earth at University College London under Prof. Matt Powner. The origins of life is still an area of interest for him as well as tutoring and mentoring the next generation of scientists.
Dr. Madan Kumar S finished his Ph.D. in Physics (2015) from the Department of Physics, University of Mysore, India. His areas of research include crystallography (macromolecules and small molecules), bioinformatics, materials sciences and computer programming. He has deposited around 200 crystal structures (organic, inorganic, pharmaceutical compounds, co-crystals, salts and polymorphs) in the CSD.
Colin Edge is a computational chemist who has spent most of his life in drug discovery. He doesn’t know that much about crystal structures, but he did once read Primo Levi’s ‘The Periodic Table’ and it was Isaac Asimov’s ‘The Search for the Elements’ that got him interested in chemistry in the first place.
Natalie Johnson is a research scientist at the CCDC. She works as part of the Database Team and is primarily focused on investigating the integrity of structural data in the CSD.
Kevin M. Jablonka is a Ph.D. student at the Laboratory of Molecular Simulation at EPFL in Switzerland and tries to use data-driven techniques for materials discovery and property prediction (this is the reason he loves the CSD).
Charmaine Arderne is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Sciences at the University of Johannesburg, APK Campus in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, South Africa. She is interested in simple coordination complexes of the transition elements of cobalt and nickel that are able to mimic the action of large biological enzymes and is passionate about teaching Chemistry and Crystallography to all students.
Paloma Martínez-Martín is a Ph.D. researcher at the Organic Chemistry Department at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She is developing work on new lanthanide MOF materials which present special photophysical properties.
Dr. Josefina Perles is the Head Crystallographer in the Single Crystal X-Ray Diffraction Laboratory at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She loves solving crystal structures, and collaborates with different research groups that crystallise new compounds and study their properties. She participates in outreach activities related with Crystallography, Chemistry, The Periodic Table and Green Chemistry, such as Concurso de Cristalización en la Escuela and NanoMadrid.
Rudra Narayan Samajdar just finished his Ph.D. from the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. His research interests lie in physical chemistry, spectroscopy, electrochemistry and bio-inspired green energy harvesting. During his leisure time he travels, reads, listens to music, and cooks!
Asst. Prof. Amgalan NATSAGDORJ is the head of the Department of Chemistry, School of Arts and Science, National University of Mongolia. Her research areas include the development of new tools to investigate new types of supramolecular chemistry in dye-sensitized solar cells, synthesis and applications of fluorescent coumarin sensors and their biological activity, and chromogenic and fluorogenic probe for organophosphorus nerve agents.
Archana K. Pattnaik is a Ph.D. researcher at the Supramolecular & Structural Chemistry Laboratory, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, India. Her work is based on synthesis and structural analysis of coordination polymers, MOFs mainly related to noncarboxylic acid-mediated molecules. She likes to dance, listening to music, travel and one of her dreams is to explore different places with different cultures. Apart from her lab work, her imaginary world dimension is so big that she wonders over there all beautiful places in the world and never gets free time once she enters into it.
Christa Hale is an undergraduate student at Illinois State University. She is a double major in General Biology and Spanish with a minor in Chemistry. In her research lab, she is studying the impacts of mutations in GARs gene on muscular structure and functions in Drosophila melanogaster (Fruit Flies).
Kristin Higgins is an undergraduate student at Illinois State University. She is pursuing a major in Pre-Veterinary medicine with a minor in Chemistry. She plans to go to Veterinary School in the future to earn her DVM.
Julie Harris is on track to graduate from Illinois State University in Spring 2022 with a degree in Chemistry Education. She is passionate about sharing chemistry with others and hopes to continue to do so after graduation.
Kimberly Le is an undergraduate student at Illinois State University studying Biochemistry with a minor in Biological Sciences. She is currently in a research lab that is focusing on developing new synthetic routes to different porphyrin systems. During her spare time, she loves to paint, run, hike, and listen to music.
Chiara Lagioia is an undergraduate student at Illinois State University planning to be a middle school science teacher. She has always had a love for chemistry and hopes to teach kids the importance of science.
Ioanna Gkogka is a 3rd year undergraduate student at Democritus University of Thrace- Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. She is really interested in structural, computational biology and bioinformatics.
Eirin Sullivan is an assistant professor of inorganic and materials chemistry at Illinois State University. Her research explores the relationship between the crystal structures and physical properties of functional materials. In her spare time, she listens to heavy metal, enjoys cross-stitch, and trains Brazilian jiu jitsu, but not at the same time.
Gideon Kweku Yawson is a student at Illinois State University pursuing a masters degree in Chemistry. Currently, he works in the field of Bioinorganic Chemistry. His research dwells on Ruthenium(III) metal complexes that modulate amyloid-beta aggregation, one of the primary pathological factors that is proposed to be responsible for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Research at the interface of chemistry and biology is central to my passion.
Seth Corrie is an undergraduate student at Illinois State University majoring in General Chemistry and minoring in History. He has recently become involved in a research lab focused on the total synthesis of organic compounds with an emphasis on [5+2] cycloadditions.
Alexis Graybeal is an undergraduate chemistry student at Illinois State university. She currently works in a research lab that focuses on the synthesis of new porphyrin analogues with varying subunits.
Dr. Laura McCormick McPherson is a research fellow at the National Crystallography Service at the University of Southampton. She began her career making coordination frameworks, which seemed like the best way to combine her interests in puzzles, pretty coloured shiny things and radiation.
Tanay Menon (at the time of writing this) is a student, who worked at the CCDC as a volunteer for 10 days albeit over the span of 3 weeks and a day. He is really interested in computer science, physics, music and loves the gym (at the time of reading… he may not be). He is surfing a large, relentless wave called life; it will take him to either a beautiful shore with clear blue waters or a rough, rocky beach with… not really the best waters; nevertheless he’ll end up figuring something out when he gets there.