Gerard gained his BA in Biochemistry at Oxford, his PhD in Molecular Immunology at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and was an MRC post-doctoral Fellow at University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where he developed his abiding interest in the molecular biology of cancer. He returned to the UK to take up a Research Fellowship at Downing College, Cambridge and an Assistant Professorship at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. In 1988, he joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London as a Senior, then Principal Scientist, and from 1996-9 concurrently held the Royal Society’s Napier Research Professorship in Cancer Biology at UCL. In 1999, he relocated to San Francisco as a Distinguished Professor of Cancer Research at UCSF, returning to Cambridge UK in 2009 as Sir William Dunn Chair of Biochemistry. In May 2022 he moved to the Francis Crick Institute and was appointed Professor of Cancer Biology at Kings College, London. Gerard’s research focuses on defining the molecular aberrations that underpin genesis and maintenance of cancers, with particular (although not exclusive) emphasis on cancers of pancreas, lung and liver.