Alex was born in Bradford in West Yorkshire, England, in 1985. He obtained his M.Chem. from the University of Oxford in 2008 and his D.Phil. in 2012 working in the group of Professor Stephen G. Davies on stereoselective fluorination with boron fluorides. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral research associate with Professor Scott E. Denmark at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, working on iron-catalysed cross-coupling of alkylsulfur electrophiles and the first catalytic, syn-dichlorination of alkenes. On returning to the UK, he took up a second postdoctoral appointment with Professor Guy C. Lloyd-Jones at the University of Edinburgh, working on gold-catalysed C–H arylation. In late 2016, he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to commence his independent research career at the University of Bath. His research interests centre on the development and mechanistic understanding of new synthetic methods for organic synthesis. Principle themes include catalysis (both with and without metals), C-H bond functionalisation, and the use of under-exploited reactive intermediates in organic synthesis.