[3] He was born in 1950 and educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and the University of Bristol, where he gained a BSc and PhD in chemistry.
He then became head of the Mass Spectrometry Unit at the University of Wales College of Medicine, during which period he spent a sabbatical year at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina, USA.
These studies of an organism's entire DNA sequence (known as genomics) have in turn led to the development of a similar field of research, called 'proteomics'.
[citation needed] One of Queen Mary University of London's strategic aims was to build upon the institution's global research impact as measured by, among other things, ranking in league tables.
In 2012, during a reorganisation in The School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, staff members were dismissed on grounds of redundancy while similar posts were advertised.
[7] Queen Mary has responded to these criticisms with a Frequently Asked Questions document[8] and a comment piece by Simon Gaskell in Times Higher Education.