I first came to Imperial  from Cambridge in 1979 and, apart from spells working in the US (at UC Santa Barbara) and for the BBC, have been here ever since, joining the faculty in 1985. I am  Head of the Optoelectronics section.  I have experienced all aspects of the academic’s job, from  giving large UG lecture courses (and winning awards for them), managing MSc. Programmes and large research collaborations, to the whole spectrum of teaching, examining, recruitment and promotions tasks. Currently I have a live grant portfolio of >£1.5M, mostly from EPSRC and an aggregate total of >£10m.. I have more than 280 publications, and graduated 26 PhD students with a 100% sucess rate. I served as Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences from  2009. Nowadays I do a lot of committee work for other HEI’s and on international panels.