Paul Alewood is a Group Leader and Professor of chemistry at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), the University of Queensland. He obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Calgary (Canada) and undertook postdoctoral studies at the Universities of Geneva, London and Melbourne before taking up a lectureship at the Victorian College of Pharmacy in 1985. He was a foundation staff member at Australia’s first private university (Bond University, Queensland) before moving to the University of Queensland in 1990 and helped form the IMB in 2000. In 2015, he was granted a Principal Research Fellowship by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia. His research encompasses the broad fields of peptide, protein and medicinal chemistry with major interests in the development of novel chemistry to modulate structure and function of cysteine-rich bioactive peptides, the design and synthesis of new peptide drugs, peptidomimetics and proteomics. Current research targets involve the discovery of novel toxins from Australia’s venomous creatures, the design of mediators of neuropathic pain and ion channel therapeutics. He was a co-founder of the Melbourne-based peptide company, Auspep, and Xenome, a spin-off biopharmaceutical company from the IMB (UQ). Through commercial partners AMRAD and Xenome, AM336 and Xen2174 entered the clinic for the treatment of neuropathic pain. He co-founded the Australian Peptide Society in 1990 and is the current co-chair. He is the chairman and founder of the Venoms to Drugs Symposium. He is author of over 350 journal articles plus 14 patents and has trained more than 50 postgraduate students.