Ana Lorena Morales-García is from Pachuca in Mexico. She got her degree in Chemistry in 2008 at Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, which is the State University; Pachuca is the capital of Hidalgo. We were lucky to have Ana here working on the interaction between bacteria. She worked in a collaboration with the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences with Dr Steve Rolfe as co-supervisor. Ana came to Sheffield in September 2008 to do a PhD with integrated studies, which meant that her first year involved taking the MSc in Nanoscale Science and Technology, which is offered jointly with the University of Leeds. Ana spent her PhD mapping individual cells with atomic force microscopy, especially the chemical force variant, in which the AFM tip is coated with a monolayer of polymers or metal. She also studied bacterial interactions with biofilms. Her work was part of the Cell-Mineral Research Centre of the University of Sheffield. After submitting her thesis, she joined the Low-Dimensional Chemistry programme grant team to work on polymer surface diffusion. Ana then took a fully funded postdoctoral position from P&G, who were impressed with her thesis. She did more postdoctoral work with them but this time at Newcastle University before P&G bowed to the inevitable and hired her. On Wednesday May 7, 2014 Ana successfully defended her thesis before her examiners, Professors Cameron Alexander (University of Nottingham) and Catherine Biggs. Catherine was then at the University of Sheffield but left for Newcastle University. Since Newcastle was so busy stealing Sheffield people, one figures it must have its attractions...
Publications
A. L. Morales-García, R. Walton, J. T. Blakeman, S. A. Banwart, J. H. Harding, M. Geoghegan, C. L. Freeman, and S. A. Rolfe "The role of extracellular DNA in microbial attachment to oxidized silicon surfaces in the presence of Ca2+ and Na+" Langmuir 37 9838-50 (2021)
A. R. Hall, J. T. Blakeman, A. M. Eissa, P. Chapman, A. L. Morales-García, L. Stennett, O. Martin, E. Giraud, D. H. Dockrell, N. R. Cameron, M. Wiese, L. Yakob, M. E. Rogers, and M. Geoghegan "Glycan-glycan interactions determine Leishmania attachment to the midgut of permissive sand fly vectors" Chem. Sci. 11 10973-83 (2020)
J. T. Blakeman, A. L. Morales-García, J. Mukherjee, K. Gori, A. S. Hayward, N. J. Lant, and M. Geoghegan "Extracellular DNA provides structural integrity to a Micrococcus luteus biofilm" Langmuir 35 6468-75 (2019)
Y. Pen, Z. J. Zhang, A. L. Morales-García, M. Mears, D. S. Tarmey, R. G. Edyvean, S. A. Banwart, and M. Geoghegan "Effect of extracellular polymeric substances on the mechanical properties of Rhodococcus" Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1848 518-26 (2015)
Oral presentations and prizes
Physical Aspects of Polymer Science (PAPS15), Manchester, September 2015
University of Sheffield Enterprise PhD student public engagement first prize for best research presentation, Sheffield, March 2014
European Biophysics Congress, Budapest, August 2011
Kroto Family Science Education Prize, Sheffield, June 2011
Best poster prize, Nano Measure 2010, Krakow, Poland, June 2010
Downloads
Poster presented at PhysCell, Hyeres, France, September 2012 (0.6 MB)
And finally...
In June 2011 Ana won the Kroto Science Education Prize for her outreach work, particularly that with Sheffield's Somali community, which is quite large. She is photographed here with Sir Harry Kroto and Lady Margaret Kroto. Sir Harry, shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry and is, like Lady Margaret, a graduate of the University of Sheffield.
This photo is used without permission, but the web page from whence it came has been deleted. I'd like to be able to credit someone, so please get in touch if this is your photo!