Lecture in H46

About our guest speaker:

Dylan Jayatilaka is a theoretical and computational chemist whose work has played a central role in the development of quantum crystallography, a field that bridges quantum chemistry and diffraction-based structural science. After completing his undergraduate studies in Chemical Physics at the University of Western Australia, he earned his PhD in Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge under Nicholas Handy, followed by postdoctoral research at NASA Ames Research Center.

Returning to UWA, he pioneered approaches to extract “experimental” wavefunctions from X‑ray diffraction data and led major advances in refining molecular structures directly from experimental electron densities. His work has been instrumental in enabling accurate determination of hydrogen positions and atomic thermal motion, bringing X‑ray crystallography into quantitative agreement with neutron diffraction. He also helped establish quantum crystallography as a formal discipline, co-organising its inaugural conference and contributing to the creation of the IUCr Commission on Quantum Crystallography.

Currently, at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen, Jayatilaka focuses on extending quantum crystallographic methods to ultrahigh‑resolution protein structures, with the goal of making these techniques broadly accessible for studying complex chemical and biological systems.