New Faces

---

Chris Davies

Lecturer in Biochemistry

Chris Davies, lecturer in Biochemistry in BIOLS, is an X-ray crystallographer with a passion for birds. Living organisms work, says Chris, because of the structure and interaction of various large molecules (such as proteins). The structure of a crystal and the way in which molecules fit together in its formation can reveal vital information about the structure of the molecules themselves. X-ray crystallographers gain this information by bombarding crystals with X-rays and detecting the patterns they form when they are reflected. This technique played a vital role in unravelling the secrets of DNA and also in the pioneering work on the structure of various important proteins.

Before he came to Sussex, Chris spent six years as a research worker in the United States, first at Duke University, North Carolina, and then at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. He made the obligatory Elvis pilgrimage to Graceland but his main hobby is bird-watching. While in Memphis he seems to have spent most of his spare time at a local sewage works which provided prime 'mud-flat' conditions for thousands of sandpipers, plovers and other birds. Rights of way and right to roam are virtually unknown in the US - particularly in the Deep South - so, according to Chris, the sewage works was the best place to indulge in his hobby without getting shot.

Despite his unsavoury pastimes, romance has not passed him by. He has found a southern belle to share his mud-flat passions and they are to be married this June in Savannah, Georgia.