A meeting of minds, mechanisms and memories!

Julea Butt

Julea is a Professor of Biophysical Chemistry at UEA. Her research focuses on ‘electric’ bacteria to produce green electricity from resources typically considered as waste, and by environmental bacteria for nitrogen-cycling. She pioneered the study of adsorbed electroactive proteins for novel perspectives of their biochemistry with Fraser! Protein Film Electrochemistry is now used by many groups around the world! We can't wait to hear her speak on being 'Wired for Life'.

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Judy Hirst

Judy is a Professor of Biological Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and Director of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci). An expert on mitochondrial complex I, Judy studies energy conversion in complex redox enzymes and has been awarded a Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Prize and the Keilin Memorial Lecture and Medal. We are looking forward to Judy’s inspiring talk, ‘High-resolution structures of respiratory complex I in energy-transducing membranes by single-particle cryoEM’.

Sean Elliot

Sean is a Professor of Chemistry at Boston University, and a member of the Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Cell Biology (MCBB) and Bioinformatics Programs. We are delighted that Sean will be speaking on ‘The critical role of redox carriers in low-potential biological reductions: a ferredoxin story’.

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Christophe Léger

Christophe is Directeur de Recherche for the Laboratoire de Bioénergétique et Ingénierie des Protéine in Marseille. Their work investigates the mechanism of multicenter redox enzymes by combining various kinetic techniques, including direct electrochemistry. Christophe will thrill us with his talk 'Changing the apparent properties of hydrogenase by embedding them in redox polymer films'.

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Lars Jeuken

Lars is a Professor of Biophysical Chemistry at Leiden University. Lars' research aims to understand the mechanism of respiratory enzymes at the molecular level by developing novel biophysical tools. He also aims to exploit bacterial respiration using biohybrid approaches for solar fuel production. We are excited to learn from Lars about 'Redox regulation of activity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis cytochrome bd'.

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Maxie M Roessler

Maxie is director of the Centre for Pulse EPR Spectroscopy (PEPR facility) at Imperial College London. Her research group use electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to solve important questions in the fields of bioinorganic chemistry, enzymology, and catalysis. We look forward to her talk entitled 'Tracking unpaired electrons in redox reactions'.

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Kylie Vincent

Kylie is a Professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on small molecule activation in biology, and applications of biocatalysis in cleaner, more sustainable chemical synthesis. She has pioneered new spectroscopic and structural approaches to address the mechanism of complex redox enzymes and translated applications of enzyme catalysis to market. In 2021 she co-founded the spin-out company HydRegen. We look forward to Kylie's talk, 'Combining structures, electrochemistry and spectroscopy: new angles on hydrogenase mechanism'.

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Alison Parkin

Organising Committee

Alison was lucky enough to spend 9 years in the Armstrong group, from her MChem to DPhil to JRF at Merton. She started as an academic at the University of York in 2012 where her group are developing new methods for redox protein and enzyme electrochemistry, particularly focusing on Fourier transform voltammetry. The title of Alison's talk is 'Fourier transform bioelectrochemistry'

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Clare Megarity

Organising Committee

Clare joined the Armstrong group in 2015 (fresh from her PhD) and, having caught the powerful electrochemistry bug, stayed put for over 6 years, learning under Fraser’s guidance. She worked first on di-iron hydrogenases, but her focus quickly shifted to the discovery and development of the Electrochemical Leaf. Clare started her own group at the University of Manchester in 2022, where her research centres on the electrochemical control of enzyme cascades for fundamental enzymological discovery. Her talk title is "Electrochemical Control of Jam-packed Enzyme Cascades".

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Rhiannon Evans

Organising Committee

After many years in the Armstrong lab developing production and interrogation techniques for different hydrogenases, Non joined forces with Kylie Vincent to add potential-controlled infrared and crystal structure determination to the arsenal. She now manages the Molecular Biology team at HydRegen Ltd, an Oxford-spin-out with hydrogenases at the core of their technology for bio-based sustainable chemical manufacturing. Non's talk title is 'From hydrogenase mechanisms to hydrogenase applications'.

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Vincent C.-C. Wang

Vincent was awarded with the young scholar fellowship (5-year research grant) from MOST and started to build up his own research team at National Sun Yat-Sen University in 2021. His research group is studying the fundamental mechanisms of redox reactions that are involved with energy conversion for a more sustainable future. We look forward to Vincent's talk on 'Understanding multi-electron and multi-step electrocatalysis: from a metal complex to a metal complex containing 3D framework'.

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Kourosh Ebrahimi

Kourosh is a Lecturer in Immunology and Drug Discovery at King’s College London. His research objectives are understanding the role of bioinorganic cofactors, like iron-sulphur clusters, in the immune response and viral infection and discovering new therapeutic candidates for human viral infection and cancer. We look forward to Kouroush’s talk, ‘Fraser's Lab, the kick-start of my journey into the world of bioinorganic immunology’.

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Bhavin Siritanaratkul

As a DPhil student in the Armstrong group, Bhavin was key in the discovery of the Electrochemical Leaf, publishing the concept in 2017. He has experience in solar water splitting and heterogeneous catalysis for methane conversion and currently works on electrochemical CO2 reduction specifically, scalable designs for electrolyzers, at the University of Liverpool, as part of the UKRI Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Chemical Economy. The title of his talk is 'Beyond the Catalyst: Designing Electrolyzers and Processes for CO2 Reduction'.

Bonnie J. Murphy

Bonnie is an Independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt. Their focus is on metalloproteins, especially redox proteins, that play essential roles in shaping our planet, our climate, and our health. Most projects in the group use single-particle cryo-EM, a versatile and powerful tool that allows us to determine structures of protein complexes at atomic or near-atomic resolutions, without the need to grow crystals. After some very high-impact publications in recent years we are excited to welcome Bonnie back to Oxford for her talk, the title of which is 'Snapshots of anaerobic CO2 fixation'.

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Michael Lukey

Michael is an Assistant Professor at Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. Michael's group studies the nature and regulation of metabolic adaptation during tumorigenesis and metastasis, with the intention of identifying metabolic vulnerabilities that can be targeted for cancer therapy. The title of Mike's talk is TBD.

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Kevin Hoke

Kevin is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Berry College, Georgia, USA. Kevin obtained his PhD from Caltech after which he joined the Armstrong group for his first postdoctoral position. His current research focuses on electron transfer in metalloproteins and redox cofactors. We look forward to Kevin’s talk on 'Ligand exchange rates in cytochrome c revealed through cyclic voltammetry'.

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Chris Blanford

Chris and his group study and engineer the interactions between conventional materials and biomacromolecules, cells, and spores. He joined the University of Manchester’s School of Materials in 2011. His group have integrated biocatalysts, mainly of fungal origin, with commodity materials to incorporate enzymes’ evolved functions into self-healing materials and materials for energy conversion. Since 2019, he has worked with colleagues at the University of Manchester, Sony, NIAB, and Rothamsted Research to develop materials for the selective germination of pathogenic fungal spores. This area will be the subject of his talk, “Automated detection of airborne fungal pathogens using biomimetic materials”.

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Anne Jones

Anne is Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Arizona State University. Across a wide range of distance scales, her research explores how catalytic functions can be created and modulated via scaffolding of redox centers into peptides, proteins and ensembles. This includes characterization of natural proteins and creation of synthetic systems. Anne will talk about “Supramolecular Assembly of Redox Proteins into Nanowires”.