Alex Brown PhD

In primary school Alex passed out during a dissection of a pig lung. To this day he doesn’t know if that's what sparked his fascination with science, but what he does know is that he spent the following 15 years of his life asking questions about how the body functions.

Throughout his further education, Alex developed a fascination with protein crystallography and his PhD, funded by the British Heart Foundation, involved studying the structure of blood coagulation proteins at Nottingham University. During his PhD he gained experience in the full pipeline of protein crystallography from cell culture to structure solution, as well as forays into computational drug design, assay development and electron microscopy.

Prior to this, after graduating with a BSc in Medical Biochemistry from the University of Leicester, Alex moved to the chemistry department at Leicester to complete an MSc in Chemical Research where he worked to design and synthesise a novel small molecule inhibitor for a protein he crystallised in his undergraduate project.
Keen to move somewhere more rural but continue working on protein expression and crystallography, Alex discovered Peak Proteins and joined as a senior protein scientist after his PhD.

When not in the lab, Alex has an eclectic variety of hobbies - including surfing, gardening, and playing video games - but spends most of his time in the garage tinkering with old machinery and vehicles.