I am the Leonard C Hanna Professor and vice-chair for research in the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences, and Co-director of the Cystic Fibrosis Research and Development programme at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).

My Fellowship was on cystic fibrosis (CF) and I visited CF research laboratories, primarily in the United States and Canada.

In 1980 there was little CF research being performed in the UK. My research career has been devoted to human molecular genetics, with a particular interest in the molecular genetics of epithelial diseases including CF and aspects of epithelial cell biology relevant to cancer. My team discovered the switches that turn the CF gene on and off in specific cell types in the body. This is important for developing new treatments for the disease.

My first research laboratory in 1985 was at Guy's Hospital Medical School. In 1991 I moved to the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University, where I worked until 2005 when I moved to the Children's Memorial Hospital Research Center and Northwestern University in Chicago, USA. In 2017 I moved the laboratory to CWRU.