Rate My Professor Jill Trewhella

Jill Trewhella is an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences. She also holds an adjunct appointment as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Utah and a joint appointment at the Bragg Institute, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Trewhella obtained a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in applied mathematics and physics, and first-class honours in physics, from the University of New South Wales in 1974, followed by an MSc in physics from the same university. She earned her PhD in inorganic chemistry from the University of Sydney in 1980 as the first doctoral student of Peter Wright. After her PhD, she spent four years as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. In 1984, she joined Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she launched the biological neutron scattering program, advanced to Bioscience Division Leader, became the first woman named Laboratory Fellow in 1999, and served as Program Manager for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research. During the 2001 anthrax attacks, she acted as a spokesperson for the laboratory on bioterrorism issues. From 2004 to 2005, she was Director of Special Projects at the University of Utah, contributing to the establishment of a National Institutes of Health Research Center of Excellence.

In 2005, Trewhella returned to Australia as an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Sydney. She served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) from 2009, overseeing university-wide research programs and infrastructure development, including the establishment of the Charles Perkins Centre. As a biophysicist, her research specializes in using small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering techniques to determine biomolecular structures and understand their functions, with pioneering work on membrane proteins and proteins regulated by second messengers such as calcium and cyclic nucleotides. Notable publications include "2017 Publication guidelines for structural modelling of small-angle scattering data from biomolecules in solution: an update" (2017), "Recent advances in small-angle scattering and its expanding impact in structural biology" (2021), and "2023 update of template tables for reporting biomolecular structural models by small-angle scattering data" (2023). She has authored 239 publications garnering over 8,000 citations. Her leadership in the small-angle scattering community includes developing international guidelines and fostering global collaboration. Major honors include Laboratory Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory (1999), Fellow of the Neutron Scattering Society of America (2010), Distinguished Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales (2011), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2015), and the International Union of Crystallography Guinier Prize (2022).