Charles, originally from London, spent most of his childhood in Portugal. He completed his integrated masters in biochemistry at the University of Oxford. Charles did a PhD funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of the Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Centre in Antimicrobials and Antimicrobial Resistance. Early on in his time here Charles spotted Acinetobacter baumannii colonies on agar plates that had an unusual appearance. Charles figures out that these colonies had acquired an insertion sequence in their capsule locus, altering the properties of the cell surface. In following this up, Charles discovered that the DNA folding protein H-NS determines which genes are targeted by the insertion sequence. Charles is now working in education, teaching science at GCSE and A-level.