I graduated from Cambridge University with a BA in Natural Sciences in 1991 where my time in Mike Bate’s lab sparked my appreciation for Drosophila. For my Ph.D., I worked with David Bentley at ICRF in London, studying the basic mechanisms of how transcription factors stimulate RNA polymerase II to activate gene expression using mammalian cell culture. I decided to work on a larger and more open question while a postdoc, and joined Mike Young's laboratory in 1996 at The Rockefeller University in New York to study circadian rhythms in Drosophila. I joined the faculty here at NYU as an Assistant Professor in 2000 and was awarded tenure in 2006 and promoted to Professor in 2013.