A graduate of Cambridge University, he has used genetic approaches to analyse developmental processes both in Drosophila and zebrafish for over 30 years. At the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now CRUK) in London and Oxford in the 1980s and 90s, he performed groundbreaking studies of the Drosophila segmentation hierarchy and pioneered the elucidation of the Hedgehog signaling pathway, a process that remains a major focus of his current research.
He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) and Fellow of both the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society. In 2005 he was awarded the Medal of the Genetics Society of Great Britain and in 2007 was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in recognition of his contributions to developmental genetics and biomedical science.