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Biography: Mark was born in London, and has the dubious honour of being a true cockney. He is currently Professor of Cell Biology and Parasitology at the Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery, University of Dundee and a visiting Professor at the Rockefeller University, New York. He is the author of nearly 200 research articles and papers and over 220 abstracts and conference proceedings. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and gained first class honours in Biochemistry, and remained at Oxford for his D.Phil., studying glycoprotein structure and function at the Department of Biochemistry. His postdoctoral career was spent in the United States, initially at the Rockefeller University studying glycosylphosphatidylinositol lipid biosynthesis and structure with a further period in California, firstly at pioneer biotechnology company Genentech Inc., dissecting protein processing and targeting, and subsequently at Stanford University, where he analysed protist surface protein families and began characterising the endomembrane systems of trypanosomes. He returned to England in 1994 to establish a research group at Imperial College London, moving to the University of Cambridge in 2005 and to the University of Dundee in 2013. In 2000 and 2012 he was a visiting investigator at the Rockefeller University in New York, and in 2008 visiting Professor at the University of California at San Francisco. In 2013 he was appointed as a visiting Professor at the Rockefeller University. He has also served on the teaching faculty of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood’s Hole. His research focuses principally on the parasitic protozoan Trypanosoma brucei and pioneers efforts to exploit genomics and proteomics resources to provide insights into virulence mechanisms and basic cell biology, with specific interests in protein transport systems, nuclear organisation and small G protein-mediated signalling. He also has interests in bioinformatics, graphic design, functional genomics and has a major focus on eukaryotic evolutionary biology. Mark reviews for many journals and granting agencies, is a board member of the Medical Research Council Infection and Immunity board (2014 - present), Fellow of the Linnean Society and Society of Biology and Steering Committee member for MODBIOLIN, an EU-funded project in the Czech Republic (2011 - present). In the past he served on the council of the British Society for Parasitology (2011 - 2014) and as a Board member for CamPOD, a local charity in Cambridge (2010 - 2013) associated with the Department of Pathology. In 2010 he was awarded the British Society for Parasitology C.A. Wright medal for recognition of outstanding contributions to the field. He maintains active collaborations with drug companies, cell biologists, parasitologists and evolutionary biologists in the UK, EU, Africa and North America and currently lives in Perthshire with his wife and daughter.