I was an undergraduate at Cambridge where my passion for molecular virology first began. I completed my PhD under the supervision of Andrew Lever in the Department of Medicine, understanding the control of HIV gene expression. I then moved to the National Institute of Medical Research (now Francis Crick Institute) in London where I helped to disprove the reported novel retrovirus XMRV’s link to human infection and disease. I then began my work on cellular inhibition of retroviruses, focusing on HIV. I moved back to Cambridge in 2015 as a Henslow Research Fellow at Downing College and an Associate Principal Investigator in the Department of Medicine where I continued my work on cellular inhibitors of HIV. In my current fellowship I will continue to unpick how the intricate interactions between cells and viruses during infection can dictate host response and help us understand normal cell behaviour using retroviruses, herpesviruses and coronaviruses as model systems.