Professor Roy Quinlan joined the University of Durham in 2001 and was one of those responsible for founding the Biophysical Sciences Institute, which was then established in 2007. He is a biochemistry graduate and PhD from the University of Kent, where he worked on microtubules with Professor Keith Gull FRS, before taking up an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at the German Cancer Research Centre to work on intermediate filaments with Professor Werner Franke in 1981. He joined Dr Murray Stewart at the LMB Cambridge, determining the coiled coil pitch of myosin LS2 but continued to investigate structural aspects of GFAP and lamins. In 1988, he was appointed as a lecturer to the Department of Biochemistry in Dundee. Here, his interest in the cytoskeleton and, particularly, intermediate filaments in astrocytes, cardiomyocytes, and the lens led to the discovery of the functionally important interaction of the small heat shock protein chaperones with intermediate filaments and its role in mediating the biomechanical properties of cells. In the lens, these proteins are key to its function as an optical element the eye. The strong correlation between structure and function in this tissue provides the platform for current research interests to model lens cell organization in 3 and 4 dimensions and integrating the cytoskeletal and chaperone functions into a scaled model of this tissue.