Alistair studied Medicine at The University of Glasgow and completed an intercalated BSc in Immunology during his undergraduate studies. He trained as a clinical pathologist in the West of Scotland Training School, based at the Western Infirmary, the Royal Infirmary and the Queen Elizabeth University Hospitals in Glasgow. During this training he was awarded a Pathological Society Centenary Clinical Fellowship to complete a PhD in autoimmunity and pathogen ganglioside mimicry in Guillain Barre Syndrome, supervised by Prof Hugh Willison, Dr Carl Goodyear and Prof Allan Mowat, at The University of Glasgow.

In 2014, following completion of his specialist training, he was appointed as Associate Professor and Honorary Consultant at the University of Southampton, where his research interests included tumour immunology, tumour glycosylation and neuroblastoma. In 2019 he was appointed to his current post as a Senior Clinical Researcher at the Department of Oncology.