Prof. Paul Clarke began his career at the University of Bath where he obtained his B.Sc(Hons) in 1993. He remained at Bath to study the utility and mechanism of intramolecular dioxirane epoxidation reactions under the supervision of Prof. A. Armstrong. In 1996, he obtained his PhD and moved to Florida State University where he spent two years working with Prof. R. A. Holton on the synthesis and functionalisation of taxane ring systems. In 1999, he returned to the UK to work on a carbenoid insertion approach to peptide synthesis with Prof. C. J. Moody at the University of Exeter. In September 1999, he was appointed as a lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. In January 2006, he moved to the University of York as a Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Reader and then Professor. In 2009 he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Paul was a visiting academic at Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain in 2010 and 2011 and at the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University, Canberra in 2018. Paul is an alumnus of the Apeldoorn (NL-UK: North Sea Neighbours) 2012 Conference “Higher Education at the Heart of Growth”. From 2013-2017 he was on the editorial board of the international Open Access Journal Advances in Chemistry and from Jan 2013 to Dec 2015 he was Chair of the Department of Chemistry's Graduate School. Paul is currently on the editorial boards of the journal Life, Sci. and Science of Synthesis, and he has acted as a chemistry consultant for Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Paul is an active member of the SCI. From 2010, Paul has been a member of the Yorkshire and Humber SCI Regional Committee, and is now its Chair. Paul also sits on two Governance Committees of the SCI: Membership Committee and the Careers Committee.  When not involved in chemistry-based activities he can usually be found enjoying a beer or a G&T!