Dr Allen Orville
Dr. Allen M. Orville is a Wellcome Investigator, Royal Society Wolfson Fellow, and Group Leader of the XFEL Hub at Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire UK. He has roughly equal training in spectroscopy and macromolecular crystallography (MX), and often applies both methods to the same samples. This approach yields correlated electronic and atomic structures of macromolecules and supports unparalleled mechanistic insights. Dr Orville also served as the Life Science team lead for the UK XFEL project commissioned by the STFC/UKRI with Jon Marangos as overall Science Lead and John Collier as STFC Project Champion.
Job Title
Principal Beamline Scientist and Group Leader XFEL Hub at Diamond Light Source
Research Areas
Personal Website
ORCID ID
Research Interests
- Metalloenzymes that activate O2 and create reactive intermediates such as Fe(IV)=O ferryl to catalyse some of the most energetically challenging reactions in biology,
- (Metallo)Enzymes that cleave beta-lactam antibiotics and thereby provide antimicrobial resistance to a range of human pathogens,
- Proteases critical to viral life cycles, including SARS-CoV-2 with potential impact on antiviral drug discovery,
- Light-activated systems that respond to and/or catalyse reactions that are ultimately driven by visible light photons, and
- Methods development ranging from sample preparation, to reaction initiation strategies, to data collection/processing, and to interpretation of time-resolved datasets from macromolecular systems at physiological temperature that are often engaged in catalysis/function.
