I studied for a PhD at the University of Sussex with Prof John Maynard Smith (1983-87) after spending a year in the laboratory of Prof Dick Lewontin at Harvard University on a Kennedy Fellowship. After my PhD, I held a variety of post-doctoral Fellowships in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford (SERC Research Fellowship, Junior/Senior Research Fellowship, Keble College and Royal Society University Research Fellow) between 1987-91, working in the group of Prof Bill Hamilton.

In 1991, I moved my Royal Society University Research Fellowship to UCL, first in the Department of Genetics which became the Department of Biology and then the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment. I become Reader (1996), Professor (2001) and then Head of Department (2010). The department has grown strongly during my tenure with a range of new appointments, with refurbished buildings housing new laboratories and office space. The Department has four major research themes organised into centres: CBER (Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research), CLOE (Centre for Life's Origins and Evolution), IHA (Institute of Healthy Ageing), UGI (UCL Genetics Institute), see
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/departments/genetics-evolution-and-environment

From 2005-10, I was the Director of CoMPLEX (Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology) where we ran a highly successful interdisciplinary centre, applying cutting edge techniques in mathematics, physics, engineering and computer sciences to problems in life sciences and biomedicine.