Educated at Imperial College, London, he earned his PhD at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School in 1995 with a thesis entitled In vivo studies of ischaemia-reperfusion injury in hypothermically stored rabbit renal autograft.

In 1999 he became strategic director at what was, by then, Adelphi Medi Cine, a post he held until 2002.

Since October 2013 he has been Reader in Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at UCL.

[1][2] He is the author of popular science books and many articles on the origin of life, hydrothermal vents, evolution, and cellular biology, among topics.

He is the winner of the 2015 Biochemical Society Award[3] and the 2016 Michael Faraday Prize.