A former pupil of St Mary’s and Largs Academy will be inaugurated this week as Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Portsmouth.
Professor John McGeehan is a research scientist who currently leads a team working on ground-breaking work in relation to sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.
The Largs man is researching small wood boring crustaceans called ‘Gribble’. These creatures can be found eating their way through piers all round the UK, and with a taste for wooden-hulled ships, and contain a host of enzymes, similar to those used in biological washing powders, but adapted to digest wood and turn it in sugar.
This sugar can then be fermented directly to bioethanol to add to petrol. Super bright X-rays from a huge X-ray microscope, called a synchrotron, are used to study these new enzymes.
Professor McGeehan said: “We are researching these new enzymes to turn plant waste into liquid transportation fuels for our cars, planes and trains. In the longer term, we are developing enzymes that can transform this waste into replacement chemicals for the manufacture of every day products, including plastics and textiles. Not only would those materials be renewable and sustainable, but they would help to reduce the cost of biofuels.
The Largs man works closely with researchers in the USA and their team has recently received a joint 3 year £1.1m grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and National Science Foundation, of the UK and USA respectively.
A co-director of the Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Science at the University of Portsmouth, Professor McGeehan also works closely with the charity-funded Brain Tumour Research Centre.
His wife, Dr Rhiannon McGeehan, is a cancer geneticist and together they collaborate with clinicians on the development of new treatments for gioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain tumour.
Professor McGeehan said: “I very much enjoyed my time at St Mary’s and Largs Academy. The teaching was superb and this is where my love of maths and science really began. Largs was a great place to grow up and I regularly visit my parents and keep up with the local news. I would love to visit the new school and wish it every success when it opens.”