2022 - Jill Trewhella (School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Australia)

The 2022 Guinier Prize was awarded to Jill Trewhella at the SAS2022 meeting in Campinas, Brazil with the following citation: 

Professor Trewhella is a pioneer and acknowledged leader in the application of SAS to problems in structural biology as well as a tireless promoter of the technique in general, and to the structural biology community in particular. During her career, she has published over 180 original research papers, reviews, book chapters, essays, pedagogical articles, and reports. She has served on the editorial boards of the Biophysical Journal, Biochemistry, Biology and Medicine and others. Her leadership in the development of and advocacy for well-defined standards for assessing data quality, model validation, publication and data archiving appropriate for the biosciences field culminated in the publication and wide acceptance of guidelines used by the  bioSAS community today. Throughout her stellar career, she has also mentored generations of biomolecular SAS researchers. Professor Trewhella’s achievements, positive influence and strong contributions clearly make her a most deserving recipient of the Guinier Prize.

Jill’s contributions to the small-angle scattering field are especially significant for structural modelling of SAS data from biomolecules in solution, where she led an extensive international effort to raise publication standards for biological SAS studies, as evidenced in a number of well-cited publications such as the 2012 paper authored by D. A. Jacques, J. M. Guss, D. I. Svergun & J. Trewhella. Publication guidelines for structural modelling of small-angle scattering data from biomolecules in solution were, with the support of the IUCr SAS Commission, presented as draft guidelines at the 2011 IUCr Congress in Madrid. By 2013 these guidelines gained sufficient acceptance that a letter on recommended publication standards for solution scattering in bioSANS and bioSAXS papers could be sent to a broad group of relevant journal editors (both IUCr and non-IUCr journals). These efforts culminated in the publication of a 2017 Acta Cryst. D paper, with an update on publication guidelines for structural modelling of small-angle scattering data from biomolecules in solution. This paper presented the full publication guidelines supported not only by the IUCr Journals and SAS Commissions, but also by the world-wide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB). Jill’s efforts in this area, which continue to this day, have led to a significantly increased acceptance of SAS studies in medicine and biology research. 

Jill's community leadership in the SAS field includes being chair of the Small-Angle Scattering Commission, serving on the council and executive board of the Biophysical Society and as chair of the Society’s 50th anniversary annual meeting, serving as chair of the ACA SAS Special Interest Group, serving on the Executive Committee of the NSSA, being a dedicated lecturer, educator, journal editor and, mainly, natural leader always happy to help. The award of the Guinier prize to Jill is a fitting recognition of her lifetime achievement and outstanding contribution to the field of small-angle scattering. 

Jan Ilavsky, CSAS chair (with support of all CSAS members)

Florian Meneau, SAS2022 chair