Head of the Drug Discovery Unit, University of Dundee

I obtained a PhD in synthetic chemistry, working with Andrew Holmes at the University of Cambridge. I then was a post-doctoral fellow with Parke-Davis Research in Cambridge, before spending a year teaching chemistry at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. On returning to the UK, I undertook post-doctoral work at the University of Cambridge in the area of chemical biology, before establishing my own independent medicinal chemistry research group at the Welsh School of Pharmacy in Cardiff University. The focus of my research was drug discovery for neglected tropical diseases. In 2005, I moved to a chair at the College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. There, I helped to establish the Drug Discovery Unit. I am on the management team of the Drug Discovery Unit, initially as head of chemistry and from 2022, as Head of the Drug Discovery Unit. In 2023, I became Director of the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at the University of Dundee, which brings together the Drug Discovery Unit, the Mode of Action group and the molecular parasitologists in Dundee to look at innovative approaches to drug discovery, training of drug discover to scientists from Low and Middle Income Countries and public engagement.