Professor Steven Ley is currently Professor of Chemistry and Director of Research at at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College and was BP 1702 Professor of Chemistry for 21 years. Steve obtained his PhD from Loughborough University with Professor Harry Heaney and afterwards carried out postdoctoral research with Professor Leo Paquette (Ohio State University) and then Professor Derek Barton (Imperial College). He was appointed as a lecturer at Imperial College in 1975, promoted to Professor in 1983, and became Head of Department there in 1989. In 1990 he was elected to the Royal Society (London) and was President of The Royal Society of Chemistry from 2000-2002. Steve’s research interests are varied and span many disciplines including new synthetic methodologies, the total synthesis of natural products and the development of enabling technologies for chemical synthesis - especially in the area of flow chemistry technologies. Four spin-out companies have emerged from these research interests. Steve has published over 860 papers and has been honoured with 50 major awards including recently (since 2009): the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (Elsevier); Heinrich Wieland Prize (Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany); The Paracelsus Prize (Swiss Chemical Society); The Royal Medal (The Royal Society, London); The Longstaff Prize (The Royal Society of Chemistry); the Franco-Britannique Prize (Société Chimique de France); and the IUPAC-Thales Nano Prize in Flow Chemistry. Professor Ley is also recipient of the 2018 Arthur C. Cope Award.