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Naomi E. Chayen is a pioneering biophysicist whose work bridges structural biology and materials science, with a primary focus on protein crystallization—a critical bottleneck in determining high-resolution molecular structures. Her key research areas include biological crystallography, nucleation science, and the development of innovative crystallization methodologies. Chayen’s major contributions include the invention of automated seeding techniques to optimize crystal quality, a breakthrough that transformed high-throughput structural genomics pipelines. Her 2010 paper on automated seeding (13 citations) addressed a long-standing manual bottleneck, enabling more reliable and scalable protein structure determination. She also explored the molecular basis of color in lobster shells (98 citations), unraveling structural chemistry through spectroscopy and X-ray scattering. More recently, Chayen introduced graphene-based nucleants for protein crystallization (2022, 12 citations), leveraging PEGylated graphene to accelerate crystallization in robotic screening. Her work has had a lasting impact, with over 140 total citations across her most-cited papers, and she is recognized for making crystallization more accessible and efficient for the structural biology community. Chayen’s interdisciplinary approach continues to inspire students and researchers seeking to overcome challenges in macromolecular crystallography.