I'm originally from Glasgow, Scotland. I went to Glasgow University were I obtained my undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology, a PhD in Molecular Genetics (studying the bacterial transposon Tn7 in Dave Sherratt’s lab) and then worked as a post-doc in Dave Barry’s lab studying transcription in trypanosomes. In December 1995, I finally tore myself away from Scotland and moved to a post-doc position in Steve Jackson’s lab in the Gurdon Institute, Cambridge where I started working on archaea. In Steve J.’s lab, I studied basal and regulated archaeal transcription. Setting up my own lab in the MRC Cancer Cell Unit, Cambridge, I switched to studying archaeal DNA replication. In 2007, I moved to become the Professor of Microbiology at Oxford University before relocating to Indiana University in 2012 where I was a Distinguished Professor in Biology and Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. In 2024 I moved to The Ohio State University where I now hold the rank of Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor in the Department of Microbiology. The lab works on various aspects of archaeal DNA replication, chromosome organization, cell cycle and chromosome dynamics.