Prof Suzi Jarvis joins UCD
Professor Suzi Jarvis and her nanoscale function group have recently joined UCD Conway Institute from the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN) at the University of Dublin, Trinity College. Her multidisciplinary team has a skills base that includes physics, electrical and mechanical engineering, materials science, mathematics, chemistry, biology and phycology.
Using atomic force microscope (AFM) techniques, Professor Jarvis and her group investigate the nanometre-scale functionality of organic and biological molecules. One aspect of this research focuses on the mechanical properties of biological membranes that act as a wall, either inside or surrounding a cell. The strength of these walls is important in understanding how viruses or drugs can enter cells.
The group is also using AFM to pull apart the individual amyloid fibrils in an effort to understand these self-assembled protein structures. Amyloid has long been associated with a range a debilitating and incurable human diseases; the Jarvis group hopes to discover what triggers amyloid formation in a range of physiological contexts and also how it can be controlled so that it does not give rise to disease.
Professor Jarvis graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA in Physics and a DPhil in Materials. This was followed by postdoctoral fellowships in Japan at the Joint Research Centre for Atom Technology, Tsukuba, before moving on to a staff position at the Nanotechnology Research Institute, also in Tsukuba. She became a Science Foundation Ireland principal investigator at TCD in July 2002.
The group has a number of national and international collaborations and Prof Jarvis is also a co-founder of the International Nanotribology Forum. She has made invited contributions to Nanosurface Chemistry, Encyclopedia of Chemical Physics and Physical Chemistry and Applied Scanning Probe Methods VIII. In addition she has 50 publications in journals including Nature.
Professor Jarvis hopes that through their research, she and her team can impact on medical and technological advances and help develop new biocompatible materials, electronic devices, diagnostic methods and means of drug delivery.
