Alan Spivey is Professor of Synthetic Chemistry in the synthesis section of the Department of Chemistry Imperial College London. He began his research career studying for a DPhil with Professor Sir Jack Baldwin (Oxford University) developing new syntheses of enantiomerically pure beta-substituted alpha-amino acids. Following post doctoral experience in the labs of the late Professor Wolfgang Oppolzer (Geneva University) and Professor Sir Alan Battersby (Cambridge University) investigating alkaloid total synthesis and tetrapyrrole biosynthesis respectively he was appointed to his first independent position as a lecturer at Sheffield University in 1996. He moved with his research group to Imperial College in January 2003. The focus of his group’s research is the development of useful new synthetic concepts and methods and the demonstration of their utility by application to the synthesis of biologically important molecules.