Having studied at a local comprehensive school, I went to the University of Bristol to study Zoology at degree level. I then stayed on to do a PhD and further research into how seasonal and daily rhythms are regulated by light, with a extended stays at the University of Gissen and the University of Nijmegen, before moving to the USA and working for eight years as an Assistant then Associate Professor at the University of Virginia.

I returned to the UK and Imperial College London in 1995. I moved my research group to Oxford in 2005 as the Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, and then the founding director of the Sir Jules Thorn Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute.

I give lectures and tutorials on the neuroscience of sleep and circadian rhythms to both undergraduates and postgraduates.

We developed the first MSc in Sleep Medicine, which is a fully online course with a one-week residential component. The course is being taken by 100’s of individuals around the world and is designed for both researchers and health care professionals.

We have built the largest group in the world that studies the mechanism of how sleep and circadian rhythms are generated, and how this information can then be translated to the clinic to improve human health and wellbeing.

 
My research addresses how circadian rhythms and sleep are generated and regulated and what happens when these systems fail because of societal pressures, age and disease. A key finding was my discovery and characterisation of an unrecognised light-detecting system within the eye that regulates circadian rhythms and sleep and, most recently, the translation of thesehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038c5qj; https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0zeuxOooDn/; https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0m9pnnr; findings to the clinic.

For my scientific work, I was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2008, the Royal Society of Biology in 2011 and the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2013. I was honoured by being appointed as a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2015 for services to Science. I have been a member of the Governing Council of the Royal Society, and I established and led for six years the Royal Society Public Engagement Committee. I was also the Chair of the Cheltenham Science Festival for six years and a Trustee of the Science Museum Group for eight years. I currently chair multiple committees at the Royal Society and most recently I have been appointed as the Chair of the Board of Visitors at the History of Science Museum, University of Oxford.

I have published over 300 scientific papers and received multiple national and international awards, including most recently the “Daylight Prize”. I have co-written four popular science books and my fifth, as sole author for Penguin, entitled Life Time was published in May 2022 and was on the Sunday Times Best Seller list in both hardback and paperback. I am about to publish a new book on Light, again for Penguin.

https://www.scni.ox.ac.uk/;

https://www.ndcn.ox.ac.uk/divisions/nlo/nuffield-laboratory-of-ophthalmology

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038c5qj

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0zeuxOooDn/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0m9pnnr