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Professor Lorna Dougan

MPhys (Physics), University of Edinburgh; PhD (Physics), University of Edinburgh

Lorna is a Professor of Physics, an ERC Consolidator Fellow and an EPSRC Public Engagement Champion. She is the Chair of the British Biophysical Society. Lorna is a physicist by training (MPhys and PhD, University of Edinburgh). Lorna currently leads an ERC Fellowship to explore the structure and mechanics of proteins across length scales and to exploit functional proteins as building blocks in biomaterials. Lorna's current research interests span hierarchical biomechanics, extreme biophysics, liquid structure, life in extreme environments and (bottom-up) synthetic biology. She is passionate about science communication and active in arts-science collaborative opportunities. She has been awarded a number of prizes including the British Biophysical Society Elspeth Garman prize for Public Engagement (2022), Water Woman award for Research Excellence (2020), the British Biophysical Society Young Investigator Medal (2018), the Royal Society of Chemistry MacroGroup UK Young Researchers Medal (2013) and the Medical Research Council and Royal Society Suffrage Science Award (2015).

From left to right: Ahmad Boroumand, Phoebe Reid, Alex Norgett, Sophie Cawood, Vickie Byelova, Lorna Dougan, Matt Hughes, Dimitra Katrantzi, Harry Laurent, Georgie Januszewski, Phoebe Cullen

Postdoctoral research associates

Dr Matt Hughes, Research Fellow in Hierarchical Biomaterials, received his PhD from the University of Leeds in 2021 on the translation of protein stability across length scales, winning the PR Radford / VC Jordan award for best PhD thesis in the Astbury Centre for Structural Biology. In the same year he started as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds. Matt's research interests include: capturing the dynamic formation and self-assembly of protein networks; the translation of single molecule properties to multi-molecular networks; and understanding how biology exploits geometry in living hierarchical biomaterials.

 

Dr Harry Laurent

Dr Harrison Laurent received his PhD, titled ‘The Biological Role of Water in Extreme Conditions’, in November 2021 from the University of Leeds, which was recognised for ‘research excellence’ by the University and awarded the 2023 Don McKenzie Paul Thesis Prize by the Neutron Scattering Group, a joint Interest Group of the Institute of Physics and Royal Society of Chemistry.  He now works as a research fellow at the University of Leeds, focussing on cross-length scale approaches to create and understand functional biomaterials. He primarily focusses on synthesising ‘all-enzyme’ catalytic hydrogels as highly active platforms for efficient and sustainable biosensing and flow biocatalysis, while also investigating fundamental biomolecules as carbon capture solutions.

 

Postgraduate students

Mazin Nasralla

Mazin Nasralla is an EPSRC-funded PhD student supervised by Prof. Lorna Dougan.  Mazin has been using structural refinement techniques allied to neutron diffraction, and NMR spectroscopy, to study the molecular solvation shell in mimetic aqueous solutions.  These mimetic environments studied are the shark, and an ammonia-water impact melt relevant to Saturn’s moon, Titan.  The results of this work highlight the importance of the solute-water hydrogen bond in modulating water’s hydrogen bond network and show how solute-water and solute-organic interactions control the energetic stability of solvated organic molecules.

 

Ahmad Boroumand

Ahmad Boroumand is an EPSRC-funded PhD student supervised by Prof. Lorna Dougan, Dr Arwen Tyler, and Dr Sally A. Peyman.  His research involves exploring the scaling behaviour of protein-based hydrogels, investigating how changes in the average coordination of building blocks affect the properties of folded protein hydrogels, and quantifying the number of crosslink density within these materials. His work primarily uses rheology, small angle scattering, and reversed-phase HPLC. Prior to his PhD, he completed his MSc from Sharif University of Technology, where he studied drug delivery using ultrasound waves.

 

 

Dimitra Katrantzi

Dimitra Katrantzi is a PhD student in the Molecules to Product CDT programme, working under the supervision of Prof. Lorna Dougan, Prof. Andy Brown and Dr.Nicole Hondow. Her research focuses on the investigation of protein-based hydrogels, using cryo-electron microscopy techniques to link the structure to the function of these materials.  She completed her BSc in Physics at AUTH, followed by an MSc in Advanced Materials Science at UCL, focusing on the synthesis and characterisation of ZnO nanoparticles for cancer therapies.

 

Vickie Byelova

Vickie Byelova is a PhD student supervised by Prof. Lorna Dougan and Dr. David Head. She is focusing on the use of coarse-graining computational methods to represent the dynamic unfolding of proteins during hydrogel network formation. Vickie earned her BSc and MPhys at the University of Leeds where she used molecular dynamics to investigate the effect of different potentials on colloidal network formation, with other studies focusing on bionanophysics. Following this, she enrolled on the SOFi2 CDT programme and undertook 6 months of training in soft matter before starting her PhD.

 

Alex Norgett

Alex Norgett is a PhD student supervised by Prof. Lorna Dougan, Prof. Nik Kapur, and Prof. David Brockwell. Their research focuses on creating spatial variation in structure and property protein-based hydrogels using photolithography and light-based 3D printing, with applications for engineering living matrices and drug delivery. Prior to their PhD, Alex completed a Master’s in Medical Engineering at the University of Leeds and worked in industry, gaining experience in 3D printing technologies.

 

Phoebe Reid is a PhD student supervised by Prof. Lorna Dougan, Prof. David Brockwell, and Dr Aleks Ponjavic. Her research involves investigating the mesoscale properties of protein hydrogels, looking at the significance of crosslink location for gel formation. She uses protein engineering techniques to design and express unique constructs which will ultimately be used for in situ fluorescence tagging. Phoebe earned her BSc in biochemistry at the University of Salford, including an exchange year at the University of Toledo, Ohio. On top of this, she received the John Pryde award for best final year performance, and the Steve Pearce final year project prize for biochemistry for her project investigating the role of the ACE-like protein in Shewanella frigidimarina.

Research Technician

  • Sophie Cussons

 

Past Group Members

  • Dr Toni Hoffmann (Senior Scientist, Research & Development, Avacta Life Sciences)
  • Dr Megan Hughes (Senior risk analyst, HSBC)
  • Dr Samuel Lenton (Postdoctoral Research Associate, Lund University)
  • Dr Natasha Rhys (Postdoctoral Research Associate, Kings College London)
  • Dr Marcelo da Silva (Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Bath)
  • Dr James Towey (Dean of Engineering Postdoctoral Prize Researcher, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham)
  • Dr Kasia Tych (Human Frontier Science Fellowship, Technische Universitat Munchen)
  • Dr Danielle Walsh (Medical Communications Trainee at Nucleus Global )
  • Dr Michael Wilson (Senior chemistry analyst – Microsearch laboratories ltd)
  • Dr Ellen Kendrick (Project officer in the Chief Scientific Advisor's office at Defra)
  • Dr Anders Aufderhorst Roberts (Department of Physics, Durham University)
  • Dr Alex Wright (Research Scientist)
  • Christa Brown (Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
  • Anchal Malik
  • Kalila Cook (Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Leeds, UK)