Professor Elspeth Garman has been awarded the 2016 Mildred Dresselhaus Guest Professorship at the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI) and the University of Hamburg. The annual award by the Centre provides an opportunity for eminent female researchers to stay and work there for between two to six months.
Elspeth received the senior award for her pioneering contributions to structural biology, especially in leading the field of radiation damage during macromolecular X-ray diffraction. The award also recognises her outstanding contribution to mentoring and training of a generation of crystallographers. She will be hosted by Professor Arwen Pearson at CUI. Elspeth is the Nicholas Kurti Senior Research Fellow in Macromolecular Crystallography and Tutor for Graduates at Brasenose College.
The junior award went to Liesbeth Janssen at the Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf who works on the dynamics of glassy systems.
The prize, which bears the name of Mildred Dresselhaus, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Physics at MIT, had a high number of applicants and nominations from Germany and elsewhere this year. The intention is that awardees serve as role models for young female researchers in the physical sciences and also attract world-leading researchers to Hamburg.
Elspeth commented: "I'm really honoured and delighted to receive this award and the chance to work at CUI. I'll be there for a number of three-week periods next year. As well as working with Professor Pearson and Dr Briony Yorke on some time-resolved studies, I hope to explore ideas about XFEL data collection on protein crystals with Professor Henry Chapman's group. My group also has an ongoing radiation damage project with Drs Thomas Schneider and Gleb Bourenkov at EMBL Hamburg which we hope to bring to conclusion during the award period."
On a more practical note, she added: "I'm very excited to be embarking on this new adventure after so many years spent mainly in Oxford, but now I urgently need to learn to speak some German!". Elsepth's colleague at Brasenose, Professor Conrad Nieduszynski, also commented: "Following on from her appearance on Jim Al-Khalili's 'The Life Scientific' on BBC Radio 4 this again highlights the great impact of the work of Prof Garman".
Read more about Biochemistry at Brasenose.