Stephen, originally from Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway, is a distinguished chemist and academic. He earned a 1st class MChem in Medicinal and Biological Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 2008, including a year as a medicinal chemist at GlaxoSmithKline. He pursued a DPhil in Organic Chemistry at the University of Oxford under Prof. Martin D. Smith, focusing on the total synthesis of frog toxin alkaloids.

From 2012, he held a Career Development Fellowship at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, developing advanced click chemistry techniques for protein labeling. In 2014, he joined Harvard University on a Marie Curie Fellowship, working with Prof. Emily Balskus on abiotic reactions in metabolically engineered bacteria. Returning to the University of Cambridge in 2016, he collaborated with Prof. Steve Ley.

In 2017, Stephen became a Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on synthetic chemistry and synthetic biology. In 2019, he was seconded to Caltech to work with Prof. Frances Arnold on enzyme evolution. He received a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship in 2020 for research on combining chemical catalysts with engineered microbes for sustainable chemical production. Promoted to Professor and Chair of Chemical Biotechnology in 2023, Stephen continues his impactful research at the University of Edinburgh.