I originally trained as an organic chemist with Prof Ben Davis and Prof Len Seymour at Oxford University. My PhD thesis was on the development of chemically glycosylated viral vectors for cancer gene therapy. For my post-doctoral studies I moved to Prof. Ajit Varki’s lab at the University of California, San Diego. Here I investigated how glycans are involved in cancer immunity. After five years in California I returned to the UK for a second post-doc with Prof. Fran Balkwill at Barts Cancer Institute to further train in cancer biology. In September 2017 I started my own research program with funding from UCB Pharma and Against Breast Cancer. The focus of my research is the tumour microenvironment, in particular the composition of the tumour extracellular matrix and its role in immunosuppression.