Dr. Katherine McAuley

Katherine McAuley earned her BSc and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Glasgow before moving into postdoctoral research in structural biology. Her work spanned a range of topics, including X-ray crystallographic studies of oligonucleotides, membrane proteins from photosynthetic bacteria, and industrial enzymes.

She went on to become a beamline scientist at the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) in Daresbury. In 2004, she joined the newly established Diamond Light Source in the UK, where she contributed to the design, commissioning, and operation of beamline I03. Her experience and contributions led to her appointment as Principal Beamline Scientist for I03, as well as Lead for MX Automation.

In 2020, Katherine joined PSI as a beamline scientist and has led the MX Applications group within the Macromolecular Crystallography team at the Swiss Light Source since 2021.

Katherine leads the MX Applications group, which includes the beamline scientists responsible for operating and developing the three SLS MX beamlines (PXI, PXII and PXIII) and the Cristallina-MX endstation at SwissFEL. The SLS beamlines recently underwent a significant redevelopment as part of the SLS 2.0 machine upgrade and will soon reopen to users with greatly enhanced performance.

In addition to her group leadership role, Katherine is the Industry Liaison for the MX beamlines. She supports the existing industrial user community and drives beamline developments to enhance proprietary research capabilities.

Katherine's research activities relate to the automation and optimisation of macromolecular crystallography beamlines.

The list of publications can be found at: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9545-072X