Professor Alice Vrielink obtained her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Masters of Science in Physical Chemistry at the University of Calgary in Canada. She completed a PhD in Physics at the University of London and a Diploma in Crystallography from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. From 1994 – 2001 Professor Vrielink was an Assistant and Associate Professor at McGill University in Canada. She then continued her research as a Research Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2007 she joined the faculty at UWA as Professor of Structural Biology. Alice is a structural biologist focusing on protein structure and function. She carries out crystallographic studies of transcription factors and enzymes with the aim of understanding how their molecular structures enable their biological functions. The goals of this research are to understand enzyme mechanism and to use structure to design novel therapeutic agents to treat diseases. For example a major focus of one of her projects is to establish an understanding of the processes by which bacteria evade the host immune system and generate drug resistance and to use this understanding to design novel bacterial antivirulence factors