Mark is a native of Wellington and as an aspiring young soccer player, he was recruited to play at Stanford University. He subsequently completed an undergraduate degree in Chemistry under the supervision of Professor Barry Trost. After a couple of years working as a medicinal chemist at Roche Palo Alto, he returned to New Zealand to complete a Ph.D. at Victoria University of Wellington under the guidance of Dr. Joanne Harvey. His graduate research was focused on the total synthesis of natural products and included a return to the Trost group as a visiting scholar. Mark is currently a Postdoctoral researcher in Hartwig group at UC Berkeley and is investigating the use of artificial metalloenzymes in organic synthesis.