After completing his undergraduate training and PhD at the University of Oxford in 1977 he joined the lab of Donald Helinski at the University of California, San Diego before moving in 1980 to the University of Birmingham, UK where he has remained ever since. He organised a NATO Advanced Study Institute on Promiscuous Plasmids of Gram negative bacteria in Birmingham in 1987 and was then involved with all the subsequent biennial Plasmid Biology Conferences starting with Clarence Kado’s Fallen Leaf Lake meeting in 1990. His main research focus has been to understand the complexities of the IncP-1 plasmid system but has also worked on other plasmids such as the TOL plasmid pWW0, as well as dissecting the biosynthetic pathway of the antibiotic mupirocin. He was a co-founder of ISPB in 2004 and has been Treasurer since 2010. He is also currently Treasurer of the Federation of European Microbiology Societies (FEMS) that is a sponsor of this meeting.