Sam Butterworth joined the University of Manchester as a Senior Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry in November 2016. Prior to this he worked at the University of Birmingham from 2013 and at AstraZeneca from 2005-2013. During this time he has been accountable for chemistry strategy and delivery for all phases of drug discovery projects from target review and hit generation, through to lead optimisation and pre-clinical development. His work at AstraZeneca led to the development of a targeted anti-cancer agent osimertinib that was approved by the FDA in November 2015, and along with his colleagues Sam has been recognised for this work through the 2017 RSC Malcolm Campbell Award and the 2018 ACS Heroes of Chemistry award. Since returning to academia he has established national and international collaborations focussing on translation research, predominantly in Oncology, and has been awarded >£8M translational funding as PI.