After completion of my BSc (hons class 1) Alex studied in the laboratory of Prof. I W Dawes at the University of NSW on a project aimed at cloning and characterising core snRNP proteins of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In 1997 Alex worked as a Research Assistant in Leukaemia research at the Westmead Millennium Institute for Assoc. Prof. K. Bradstock and Assoc. Prof. D. Gottlieb. From 2000 to 2003Alex worked as a senior research Assistant at the Children’s’ Cancer Institute Australia with Dr Karen Mackenzie. This project involved studying the barriers to cell imortality in addition to telomerase activation. For a brief period (2003-2004) I worked as a Territory Manager for a scientific instrumentation and consumables company before returning to biomedical research in 2004 as a Technical Scientist at EnGeneIC Pty Ltd. In 2007 Alex returned to a research institute environment by taking a position as a research assistant with Prof. Dunwoodie in the embryology group at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. This led to the successful completion of a PhD entitled “NOTCH4 is an inhibitor of canonical Notch signalling”. Following this Alex joined the Ingham institute working for Tara Roberts in the medical oncology, cancer and inflammation group.