Prof Marc Vendrell began his independent career at the University of Edinburgh in 2012 as an Academic Fellow to bridge Chemistry and Medicine through the development and translation of chemical probes for biomedical imaging and drug discovery. Since 2020, he holds a Personal Chair of Translational Chemistry and Biomedical Imaging and leads the IRR Chemistry Hub at the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, one of the first hubs for collaborative “Chemistry in Medicine” research. His group has pioneered activatable fluorophores, fluorogenic amino acids and optical imaging probes with applications in high-resolution biological imaging, immune-cell tracking, clinical diagnostics and translational medicine. Their discoveries have led to 10 licensed and commercialised research-use-only technologies, and some observational clinical studies in several hospitals across Europe. He is co-inventor of 15 patents and has established major collaborations with clinical teams, biotech companies and global pharmaceutical partners in Europe, USA and Asia. Prof Vendrell has received >£12M funding as PI -with several ERC and EIC grants- and numerous distinctions, including Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2017), Marcial Moreno Lectureship (2018), FLIER Fellow from the Academy of Medical Sciences (2019), SRUK Emerging Talent Award (2019), Bader Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2023), Daiwa Foundation Award (2025) and the Research Excellence Award from the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (2026). In 2024, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Scottish national academy.