John joined the Wallace group in early 2023 to develop sustainable routes to the commodity chemical adipic acid using renewable feedstocks. His PhD research to determine the crystal structure and biochemical regulation of plant immune receptors was carried out at the John Innes Centre, where he subsequently took a postdoctoral position using plants to produce virus-like particles for fundamental biology and biotechnology applications. Having worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, investigating the biochemistry of bacterial microcompartments, John returned to the UK in 2020. After two years working in industry as a process development scientist and senior scientist in assay development, John decided to return to academia and pursue research aimed at reducing the impact society has on the environment.