Alan Ford was born in Gateshead, England, in 1972. He studied at the University of Hull, England, and received a B.Sc. in chemistry in 1993 and a Ph.D. in 1996. He has held postdoctoral positions in the Selective Synthesis Group, University of Hull, from 1997 to 1998, in the Department of Metal-Mediated Organic Synthesis, Debye Institute, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, from 1998 to 2000, and in the Organic and Pharmaceutical Synthesis Research Team, Department of Chemistry, University College Cork, Ireland, from 2000 to the present. His main research interests include development of novel rhodium catalysts for asymmetric carbene chemistry and the synthesis of nucleoside analogues as potential antiviral agents.