Dr. John Henry Beale

John received a BSc in Biochemistry from Imperial College London, UK before completing a DPhil in Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, UK in membrane protein structural biology under the guidance of Prof. Simon Newstead. In 2016, John moved to the UK synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, where he developed serial crystallography techniques on beamline I24. John was then awarded a PSI-Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship in the MX group at PSI in 2019 to continue these investigations. In 2020, John became the serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) beamline scientist on Cristallina, the third experimental station of SwissFEL's ARAMIS beamline. John's chief responsibility is to lead the Cristallina-MX project which aims to reduce the barriers of SFX to new and inexperienced users. Cristallina-MX will be open for users in the 2^nd SwissFEL call in 2023 for the first semester of 2024.

Since 2018, John has tried to develop strategies to create the samples required for modern serial crystallography experiments at either synchrotrons or XFELs. These include methods to create large volumes of micro-crystals and fixed-target mounting and loading techniques. John is now also working towards the realization of a fixed-target endstation on Cristallina called SwissMX. The endstation's primary purpose will be high-throughput SFX for room-temperature time-resolved experiments.