Lorna Smith

Biography

Lorna is a Professor of Chemistry and the Peacock Tutorial Fellow at St. Hilda's College, University of Oxford. Her research uses a combination of experimental and theoretical approaches to characterise native and non-native protein folds. Lorna has a long-term collaboration with Professor Wilfred van Gunsteren and co-workers at the ETH in Zurich where she was a visiting Professor in 2010. 

Lorna studied for both her BA and D.Phil. in Chemistry at the University of Oxford (Lady Margaret Hall) and did her D.Phil. in the lab of Chris Dobson, using 3D NMR techniques, which were at that time very new, to determine the structures of the proteins human interleukin-4 and hen lysozyme in solution. Following this Lorna was a Junior Research Fellow at St. Cross College Oxford and then a Royal Society University Research Fellow (from 1994-2001). Both these Fellowships were held in the Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences. Lorna was appointed to her current position in 1999 and was awarded the title of Professor in 2019.

Lorna is involved with the Oxford Pastorate, co-leading the Christians in Academia group. This is a formation group which helps post-graduate students and postdocs reflect on the relationship between their faith and their academic research and consider questions of vocation and character in academic life. 

Academic biography

Research topics

• Protein folding
• Biomolecular simulation
• Protein NMR spectroscopy