Emily completed her undergraduate degree in organic chemistry at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and her PhD in Bio-organic Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. After a brief period as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, she returned to New Zealand to take up a lectureship at Massey University. In 2005 she was awarded the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry Easterfield medal. In 2006 Emily moved to the University of Canterbury to take up a position in the Chemistry Department. She was awarded the Applied Biosystems Award by the New Zealand Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2008, and in 2010 Emily received a National Teaching Award for Sustained Excellence in Tertiary Teaching. She is a principal investigator of the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery. In 2017 she moved to Victoria University of Wellington to take up a position as Professor of Chemical Biology with the Ferrier Research Institute. Emily’s research area spans the areas of chemistry and biochemistry and involves a range of research techniques including natural product synthesis, protein evolution and engineering, and molecular and structural biology. More recently her research group has focused on the molecular mechanisms and evolution of enzyme allostery and metabolic engineering of biosynthetic pathways.