I am a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease in the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge, and Honorary Consultant in Infectious Diseases. Our research uses genetic and quantitative proteomic approaches to understand how viruses and retroelements interact with and manipulate their host cells. We discovered the Human Silencing Hub (HUSH) complex, the critical transcriptional epigenetic repressor complex that silences invading retroelements, including newly integrated retroviruses and mobile endogenous retrotransposons (LINE1s). We showed how HUSH provides a genome-wide immune-surveillance system, unique in its ability to recognise and rapidly shut down transcriptionally-active retroelements that invade the genome, even those to which the host organism has not been previously exposed. We collaborate with Felix Randow and other members of the PNAC Division, taking advantage of our complementary expertise to gain mechanistic insights into microbial pathogenesis using genetic and proteomic discovery platforms. We anticipate the discovery of common themes by which different pathogens exploit cellular pathways to overcome cell-autonomous immunity and evade cellular recognition.