Alfredo Bellisario

Alfredo is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology and TNDR’s student representative for the Centre for Photon Science.

Teknisk-Naturventenskapliga Doktorandrådet (TNDR) is a Ph.D. student representative body at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University that has a presence in many multidisciplinary scientific centres and boards at Uppsala. Student representatives for each area are elected once a year, and Alfredo has been appointed for the 2021/22 term.

Alfredo’s research aims at resolving the structure of single biomolecules using ultra-fast high-intensity X-rays from high-brilliance sources called Free Electron Lasers (FELs).

In FEL imaging experiments, the X-rays that interact with atoms in the biomolecule diffract and can be captured by a photon detector. The diffraction signal delivers information on the atomic structure of the molecule and, in principle, can be processed to reach Angstrom or even sub-Angstrom resolution.

This is a large field, so my focus is mainly on how to process the collected information that reaches the detector. During experiments, the signal might be low or there might be artifacts in the detector that make it difficult to puzzle out how the molecule looks at the end. One of the aspects that I’ve explored is to use neural networks to correct for these artifacts to get the best diffraction pattern possible.

You can find out more about TNDR on their official website.