Steve is Professor of Stem Cell and Cancer Biology at the University of Edinburgh. His PhD studies in developmental genetics were performed at the NIMR in Mill Hill, London (now The Francis Crick Institute). As a postdoctoral scientist with Prof Austin Smith FRS at the University of Cambridge his research focussed on gene regulation in mammalian stem cell biology. Latterly, as a Wellcome Beit Fellow, he uncovered the core transcriptional and epigenetic programs that operate in neural stem cells and revealed these are often highjacked by brain cancers, such as glioblastoma.
Steve established his own independent laboratory in 2010 at the UCL Cancer Institute (London), before moving in 2013 to the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre in Edinburgh. He held the prestigious Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Senior Fellowship and, in 2017, was promoted to full Professor. His laboratory continues to study the molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate stem cell identity and differentiation and how these operate in the context of human cancer.
He is currently the Director of the CRUK Brain Cancer Centre of Excellence and Associate Director of the CRUK Scotland Centre. He is part of the senior leadership team for the UK Engineering Biology Mission Hub, based in Edinburgh. Steve is also Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Trogenix, a biotech uniting cutting-edge technologies in genomics, oncology, immunotherapy, and gene therapy to create new precision immunotherapies, focussing on glioblastoma.