Role at ANSTO
Dr Anna Sokolova was a Project Leader for the design, construction and commissioning of BILBY, the new time-of-flight small-angle neutron scattering instrument at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering and is now an Instrument Scientist on the Bilby team.
Anna is a physicist from the Small Angle Scattering Laboratory at the Institute of Crystallography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). During her PhD and in the following years, she worked extensively in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Hamburg outstation c/o Deutsche Electronen Synchrotron).
She has a Masters in Physics/Biophysics from the Faculty of Physics, M V Lomonosov Moscow State University (Diploma Cum laude), and a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from the Institute of Crystallography RAS (Moscow, Russia). Both areas of study were focused on the development of new methods for small-angle scattering data analysis and interpretation, as well as, on the application of the SAXS technique to protein structure studies. She also trained at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry RAS (Moscow, Russia) in basic biochemistry techniques for protein sample preparation. Also, Anna has experience in some programming and mathematical methods in structural research.
From 2007 to 2009, Anna worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Food Science Project Group at ANSTO. Starting in October 2009, Anna started work on the Bilby project.
Her interest and experience expanded significantly into the area of design, building and commissioning of SANS instrumentation and data reduction procedures. Anna is chair of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel for SANS instruments at the ESS (European Spallation Source).
Anna’s scientific interests have grown far from the original theme of complex biological structures. In recent years, she has worked with various users groups on projects to study a wide range of materials, from surfactants to vortex line lattices and skyrmions, often using complex sample environments.