Growing up in Nottinghamshire (Robin Hood County), I spent many happy days walking in the Peak District searching for exciting minerals, which sparked my interest in science.
I completed my PhD at the University of Leicester under the supervision of Professor Peter Moody learning the dark arts of protein crystallography. I then moved to the University of Liverpool where I was a postdoc with Dr Igor Barsukov and Professor Lu-Yun Lian using NMR and crystallography to study the cell adhesion protein Talin. A collaboration with Professors Mike Clague and Sylvie Urbé in Liverpool ignited my interest in the small protein, ubiquitin. This led me to join the lab of Dr David Komander at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, where I became an Investigator Scientist.
I established my independent group here in the Department of Biochemistry in September 2018 with an MRC Career Development Award and I spend my time growing crystals (instead of searching for minerals) and using state-of-the-art magnets and electron microscopes.
