• Associate Dean for Employability, Faculty of Sciences (from January 2018)
• Course Director for BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry with a Year in Industry
• Module Organiser for BIO-5002A (Biochemistry)
• Module Organiser for BIO-5021Y (Work Placement)

• Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, School of Biological Sciences, UEA (2020-present)
• Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader, School of Biological Sciences, UEA (2002-2020)
• University Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, UEA (1998-2002)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, South Mimms, UK (1996-1998)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Texas A & M University, USA (1994-1996)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Dundee, UK (1988-1994)

• External Examiner at Newcastle University, UK, 2020-2024 (For Biology degrees)

• External Examiner at Lancaster University, UK, 2021-2025 (For Biological Sciences degrees, Malaysia campus)

• External Examiner at Galways University, Eire, 2021-2025 (For MSc in Biotechnology)

• UEA Local Ambassador for the Biochemical Society, from 2013-2018; recognised as Local Ambassador of the Year in 2014.

• Enterprise and Engagement Activities

• Primary academic Adviser for the NRP-UEA iGEM teams, a competition involving synthetic biology projects for undergraduate students, from 2011-2016 (Details of the projects are available at the iGEM web pages, including details about the Gold medals awarded in 2012, 2014 and 2015, Silver medal awarded in 2016, Bronze medal awarded in 2013.)

• Since summer 2014, I have helped organise the Science Cafe at the Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth, Suffolk, UK. This event takes place on an approximately monthly basis, aiming to deliver informative discussions about topical science subjects. For an overview see: http://newcut.org/aboutsciencecafe.

• As part of the Science Cafe series at the Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth, Suffolk, UK, I delivered the cafe in February 2021, titled "The Molecules of Life". A video of the talk is available at this Youtube link.

Having trained as a biochemist, my research interests broadened out to encompass methodologies that involve biophysical chemistry, microbiology, molecular biology and bioinformatics. My research focused on macromolecular interactions of bacterial DNA repair proteins, particularly DNA and RNA ligases, with experiments performed in vitro or in bacterial model organisms. 

Having graduated with a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Sheffield, UK, I went on to study for a PhD and this began a research career that has involved a range of studies using classical biochemical techniques, biophysical methods of analysis, and molecular biology procedures.

My Ph.D. was supervised by Dr. David Trentham, FRS, at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, London, UK, where I studied the kinetics of energy transduction in rabbit skeletal muscle. My post-doctoral studies began in the laboratory of Prof. David Lilley, FRS, in the Biochemistry Department of the University of Dundee, Dundee, UK. Studies of unusual DNA structures developed into experiments that were among the first to show that the activity of neighbouring promoters can be coupled through DNA topology.

In 1994 I moved to the laboratory of Dr. Robert Wells, at the Institute for Biosciences & Technology, Texas A&M University, Houston, USA. Various projects identified that repeating triplet DNA sequences undergo a high level of genetic instability in bacterial cells. From 1996 to 1998 I worked in the laboratory of Dr. Tomas Lindahl, FRS, (winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Modrich & Sancar) at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK), South Mimms, UK.

I arrived at the School of Biological Sciences at UEA in 1998 as a UEA Research Fellow. I transferred across to academic staff in 2002, gaining promotion to Professor in 2020. My research group has characterised DNA repair processes from a variety of organisms, feeding into wider interests in mechanisms that influence genome stability. The international reputation of our research is reflected in collaborations with researchers in the USA, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic and India.

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• FRSB - Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (2019)
• SFHEA - Awarded Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2015)
• Ph.D. - University of London, UK (1989); research undertaken at National Institute for Medical Research, London
• B.Sc. - Biochemistry, University of Sheffield, UK (1984)

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