Flora Meilleur

Bio

Flora Meilleur is a structural biologist specializing in protein chemistry and neutron crystallography, and serves as an instrument scientist on the IMAGINE and MaNDI instruments (HFIR CG-4D and SNS BL-11B) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Meilleur received her PhD in biophysics from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and Université Grenoble Alpes (Grenoble, France) in 2004. After graduation, she served as instrument scientist on the LADI diffractometer at the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL). She joined ORNL in 2005 and has held a joint faculty appointment with the Biochemistry department of North Carolina State University since 2007. She is an associate professor since 2015. In 2009, Meilleur established a university consortium that secured NSF funding to build the IMAGINE instrument at HFIR. She served as lead scientist on IMAGINE 2009-2017, building, commissioning and delivering the instrument into the user program in 2013. She supports and collaborates with users to elucidate enzymatic mechanisms using neutron diffraction. Her own research focuses on cellulose degrading enzymes, including the recently discovered lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases. Graduate students and post-doctoral fellows working with her use small angle X-ray/neutron scattering, X-ray/neutron crystallography, DFT calculations and isotopic labeling techniques to study the structure, function and dynamics of these systems. She has co-organized and chaired neutron focused sessions at international meetings, and since 2010 has organized and led an annual workshop entitled Neutrons in Structural Biology at ORNL. She served as a member of the SNS/HFIR user committee (SHUG) from 2007 to 2009, as a member-at-large of the NSSA between 2008 and 2012, as the elected Secretary of the Neutron Scattering Society of America between 2019 and 2022. Meilleur was appointed as a co-editor for Journal of Applied Crystallography in 2016 and as an editor in 2021.

Awards

2013 ORNL Significant Event Award (Team award; Role: Science lead)

Publications