ACA SIG Officer Candidate 2021: Toby John Woods

I am the Assistant Staff Crystallographer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My journey with X-ray crystallography began as an undergraduate student making magnetic polymers for Jamie Manson at Eastern Washington University and continued as a graduate student in the Dunbar lab at Texas A&M University where I synthesized molecular magnets. As a graduate student, teasing out the details of a small molecule refinement quickly became my “shiny object” of the day and I consider myself fortunate that I was able to continue on a crystallography career path. As a service crystallographer, the majority of my work involves what could be described as routine structure solution but I maintain an interest in high-resolution charge density refinement when opportunities present themselves.

It would be my pleasure to serve as the Service SIG Secretary/Treasurer. It is an exciting time in crystallography as methods and techniques that were previously very specialized, such as micro electron diffraction, become more mainstream and accessible. We will increasingly see these methods incorporated into service facilities and I believe the Service SIG can be a great forum for bringing together people who have an interest in pursuing these types of experiments.