Nigel moved to academia in 2004 following 25 years at the UK Department of Health based at Porton Down. He is director of Nottingham’s Synthetic Biology Research Centre (SBRC) and of a national BBSRC network in industrial biotechnology of >850 academic and industry members. He co-leads the ‘Next Generation Therapeutics’ theme of Nottingham’s NIHR-funded BioMedical Research Centre (BRC), has held a Royal Society Wolson Merit Award and been awarded doctor honoris causa by the University of Helsinki. He has filed 23 patents, published over 225 articles, supervised 80+ PhD students and has secured in excess of £50M in funding, including a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, since arriving at Nottingham. He has consulted for Merck, Protherics and Pfizer and sat on the scientific advisory boards of Cobalt, DeepBranch and LanzaTech. He has worked with 50+ companies, including; Unilever, Allergan, Pfizer, Merck, Dupont, Invista, Evonik and Astellas.He is Co-founder and Board Chairman of Forge Genetics Ltd, an innovative genome editing company.