Meet Industrial Liaison team member, Izzy Barker

Tell us how you came to work at Diamond?

I started as a Research Technician for Industry XChem in 2022. My role includes completing all crystallisation required for the XChem platform, supporting the completion of the fragment screening experiments and maintaining lab equipment.  

It’s a privilege to be working in a national facility as my first job post-university. Being here gives me the opportunity to not only further my skills in crystallography but to also explore the many other techniques available at Diamond.

I joined Diamond 18 months ago, following the completion of my MSci in Biochemistry at the University of Sussex. My final project was a structural study on a DNA replication protein interaction while my third-year project focused on data analysis of a ligand bound protein.

Along-side my degree I spent two summers working at an Abingdon-based biotechnology company in their insect cell expression team.

What does your typical day-to-day work look like?

As I have two main aspects to my role, my day-to-day can vary. One day I can be completing the crystallisation for any of the projects currently active. Another day I can be working in the lab performing any one of the three stages in the screening process. Between these roles, I also look after the equipment to keep the lab running smoothly.  

 Which industries do you work with?/

I mainly work with biotechnology and pharmaceuticals companies as well as Contract Research Organisations (CROs).

How do you help to support companies' research challenges?

The biggest support I provide is adjusting crystallisation experimental parameters so that it works as efficiently as possible here at Diamond. This includes adapting crystallisation protocols to suit our robotics, using techniques such as matrix seeding to increase resolution, and making seed crystals to increase yield.

What is the most challenging part of your job?

One of the biggest challenges is keeping up with loop cleaning! We use up to a thousand loops per screen and are often making dirty loops faster than I have quiet time to clean them in. All joking aside time management is key. Whilst it is not generally a challenge to supply the right number of crystals at the right time, it does require constant focus and awareness of project timelines.  

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

There are many things that I find rewarding about my job, but I would say the most rewarding thing is hearing positive feedback from clients after working hard to achieve results on a challenging project.

Are there any stand-out projects?

One of the projects I’ve worked on that stands out involved a crystal morphology which did not suit the automated data collection process. This challenge allowed me to increase my knowledge as I manually collected data to help find a better set of parameters for these particular needle-like crystals.