Dr. Michael Clague obtained a PhD in biological chemistry from the University of Essex, UK. For his postdoctoral work, he moved to the National Institutes of Health as a Foggarty Fellow to study the biophysics of membrane fusion, then to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg to study the cell biology of membrane trafficking. He was subsequently appointed to a faculty position at Liverpool, where he is currently a professor of molecular and cellular physiology. He has since made contributions to the fields of membrane lipid metabolism and protein homeostasis. His recent work has focused on developing inhibitors for a class of enzymes, called deubiquitylases, for which inhibition has been shown to enhance the removal of damaged mitochondria. Ongoing work investigates these enzymes in pathways germane to cancer and neurodegeneration.