Eleanor Williams

Ellie Williams is a structural biologist with a background in ITC, NMR and crystallography. She has been heading up the protein production facility since 2021. Ellie obtained her PhD with Prof. John Ladbury and Dr. Mark Williams at University College London, looking at the chaperone Hsp90. She then moved to the SGC Oxford in 2010 where she worked with Prof. Alex Bullock, studying the ultra-rare disease fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). FOP is caused by a single point mutation in the protein ACVR1/ALK2, a ser/thr kinase and part of the BMP signalling pathway. She focused on understanding the ways the various mutations influenced the activity of ALK2 in parallel with characterising the binding of specific inhibitors, primarily through crystallography, to allow for improved inhibitor development.

In 2021 she took over running of the protein production facility within the CMD. The facility supports the work of the CMD but is also open to external customers providing high throughput cloning, protein expression (in e.coli, insect and mammalian cell systems) and protein purification services.

She is a keen supporter of public engagement in research and was the public engagement officer for SGC Oxford between 2015 and 2020. In 2020 she became a non-stipendiary lecturer in biophysics at St. Annes College, Oxford.