Julea Butt

Professor Julea Butt is a leading academic in Biophysical Chemistry at the University of East Anglia’s School of Biological Sciences. She specializes in microbial electron transfer mechanisms, biohybrid materials, and photocatalytic systems. Her research focuses on engineering proteins like multiheme cytochromes for applications in sustainable energy and environmental biotechnology.

• Member of multiple research centers including the Centre for Molecular and Structural Biochemistry and the Wolfson Centre for Advanced Environmental Microbiology.
• Expertise spans protein structure-function relationships, nanomaterial integration with biological systems, and light-driven catalytic processes.

Research interests include:

• Design of bioelectronic interfaces for solar fuels production
• Electron transport in bacterial outer membrane proteins
• Development of semi-artificial photosynthetic systems
• Mechanistic studies of cytochrome-mediated redox reactions

Recent work highlights include:

• Engineering bespoke biomolecular wires for transmembrane electron transfer
• Photocatalytic nitrous oxide removal using liposomal microreactors
• Genetic code expansion for protein functionalization in Shewanella

Her lab collaborates on projects involving microbial electron transfer, biohybrid nanomaterials, and sustainable biocatalytic systems. She is actively supervising PhD students in these areas and has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles.