KATE SMITH

Paul Scherrer Institute

Kate Smith, PhD, is group leader of the Macromolecular Crystallography Data group at the Swiss Light Source (SLS). She is responsible for the data acquisition and processing software that serves all three MX beamlines, the Fast Fragment and Compound Screening (FFCS) software suite at the Crystallisation Facility, and the development of the HEIDI sample management portal.

Kate earned her Biochemistry and Mathematics degree at Charles Sturt University, Australia, where she later completed her structural biology and protein biochemistry PhD research on nuclear transport and host-viral protein interactions in 2019. Prior to her current role, she worked at the Australian Synchrotron as a beamline scientist for a year, developing beamline automation protocols for chemical crystallography experiments. She then joined the SLS as a postdoctoral fellow, focusing on beamline automation and unattended data collection.

Since 2021, Kate has been a permanent staff member at the SLS, heavily involved in automation and software development for fragment screening at the MX beamlines.