David Klenerman is a physical chemist who graduated and completed his doctorate at Cambridge University working with Professor Ian Smith on infra-red chemiluminescence for his PhD in 1985. This was followed by postdoctoral research at Stanford University, California with Professor Dick Zare on high overtone chemistry. He then returned to the U.K. and worked for seven years for BP Research in their Laser Spectroscopy Group before returning to the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, progressing to a Professorship. He is currently a Royal Society GSK Professor of Molecular Medicine. At Cambridge his work has focussed on the development and application of physical methods, particularly laser spectroscopy and single molecule fluorescence, to biological and biomedical problems. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences and known for co-inventing next generation DNA sequencing.