Richard Payne graduated from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2002. In 2003, he was awarded a Gates Scholarship to undertake his PhD at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Chris Abell. After his PhD, Richard moved to The Scripps Research Institute under the auspices of a Lindemann Postdoctoral Fellowship where he worked in the laboratory of Professor Chi-Huey Wong. In 2008, he moved to the University of Sydney as a Lecturer within the School of Chemistry where he is currently Professor of Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology and ARC Future Fellow. Prof. Payne’s research focuses on utilising the tools of synthetic chemistry to address problems of biological and medicinal significance. His lab has also developed a number of synthetic technologies for the ligation-based assembly of large polypeptides and proteins. These methodologies have been employed in the total chemical synthesis of a number of modified proteins to understand structure-function and for the elucidation of new drug leads for a range of diseases.