Lona Alkhalaf Biography

Lona earned her PhD at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Prof Greg Challis, working on a BBSRC and Syngenta-funded project focused on the biosynthesis of thaxtomin A, employing a combination of chemical synthesis, recombinant protein overproduction and purification, enzyme assay development and protein crystallography (in collaboration with Prof Vilmos Fulop). In 2014 she undertook postdoctoral research in the group of Prof Katie Ryan at the University of British Columbia, where she worked on the enzymology of natural product biosynthesis and structural characterisation of t-RNA synthetases by X-ray crystallography. She was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Warwick in 2016, where she oversees the chemical biology research facility (CBRF) and the protein crystallisation facility. In addition to overseeing structural studies of numerous biosynthetic enzymes, she co-supervises a wide range of projects on natural product biosynthesis and mechanism of action, and enzyme mechanism and engineering. She was appointed Assistant Professor in January 2022 and promoted to Associate Professor in August 2026.