I undertook my PhD training in Biochemistry under the guidance of Professor George Rogers at the University of Adelaide. My thesis project was on the characterisation of trichohyalin. In 1985 I joined Dr Peter Steinert’s lab, at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda) where I characterised profilaggrin mRNA. In 1988 I joined Professor Dennis Roop at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston) where I studied the epidermal keratins & loricrin and identified some of the first genetic lesions in these genes that result in human genodermatoses. In 1991, I was appointed to Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and later jointly with the Department of Dermatology at Baylor. I returned to Australia in 1995 to the University of Queensland and was awarded a Wellcome Senior Research Fellowship in 1996. Since that time, my laboratory has been investigating epidermal differentiation, gene regulation and expression.