John McGrath holds the Mary Dunhill Chair in Cutaneous Medicine at the St John’s Institute of Dermatology, King’s College London, and is Head of the Genetic Skin Disease Unit, as well as Honorary Consultant Dermatologist, the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London, and Honorary Professor of Dermatology at the University of Dundee. He was born in 1962 and grew up in England, Japan and Australia. He qualified in Medicine at Guy’s Hospital (London) in 1985. He then trained in dermatology at St John’s Institute in London and did post-doctoral work in Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. In 1996, he was appointed Senior Lecturer at St John’s and became full Professor of Molecular Dermatology in 2000. He was Visiting Professor to Osaka University in 2010. He is a former Board member of the European Society for Dermatological Research and was the Society’s President in 2007-8. He is the immediate past-President of the St John’s Hospital Dermatological Society (2015-16) and the current President of the European Dermatology Forum (2017-2019). His awards include the 2008 Sulzberger Lecture, the 2010 Dohi Memorial Lecture, the 2011 Montagna Lecture, the 2012 Tanioku-Kihei Lecture, and the 2013 Cormane Lecture. He is also a previous winner of the King’s College London Teacher of the year award. In 2011 he was elected to the UK National Academy of Medical Sciences and in 2012 he was awarded the Fothergill Gold medal by the London Medical Society. He is also the lead for the UK National Institutes for Health Research on rare skin diseases as well as for the 100,000 Genome Project. He is a former editor of the journal Clinical and Experimental Dermatology and is Section Editor of Genetics for the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. He has published over 400 manuscripts, including the first reports of mutations in hemidesmosomes and desmosomes, published in Nature Genetics. His group is also responsible for discovering the mutant genes in lipoid proteinosis, Kindler syndrome, AEC syndrome (and two other forms of ectodermal dysplasia), LOC syndrome, familial primary localised cutaneous amyloidosis, and two recessive forms of epidermolysis bullosa simplex. He has been the primary supervisor on more than 20 doctoral degree students and secondary supervisor on 20 more completed theses. His main research interests involve the molecular biology and pathology of inherited skin diseases, especially epidermolysis bullosa. His professional goals are to unravel the mysteries of human genetic skin diseases and to translate some of the benefits of genetic research into clinical improvements for patients, especially through clinical trials of novel therapies. He is currently running clinical trials of cell and gene therapies in recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa and exploring how best to use molecular technologies to try to correct inherited skin diseases. He has prominent management roles within the Biomedical Research Centre (Guy’s Hospital) for Experimental and Precision medicine. He has had leading European roles in the organisation of training and research in dermatology and in designing pan-European undergraduate and resident education for dermatology. He has also introduced new long-term mentoring for medical students at King’s College London (including students from Singapore and Malaysia) and has assisted universities and colleges from Hong Kong and Australia in mentoring trainees and postgraduates and also in designing innovative clinician-scientist training opportunities.