Prof. Anthony W. Purcell completed his B.Sc. Degree with Honors at Monash University in 1987. He continued at Monash, undertaking a  Ph.D. in protein and peptide separation and ultrasensitive detection and characterization of peptides. In 1994, he joined Prof. Jim McCluskey’s laboratory at Flinders University and began a fascination with immune recognition and the key role peptides play in modulating health and disease. He soon found that his skills in analytical biochemistry and mass spectrometry had found the perfect niche. In 1997, he moved to the University of Melbourne as a senior post-doctoral fellow in the Microbiology and Immunology Department. In 2003, he was awarded a CR Roper Fellowship and began a path to independent research. Around this time, he also began to acquire some serious mass spectrometry infrastructure and began in earnest to apply cutting edge mass spectrometry techniques to key questions in immunology. In 2005, he moved to the Bio21 Institute as the Grimwade Senior Research Fellow in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Melbourne. In 2008, he was awarded an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship, and in 2009, he was appointed as a reader in the same department. In July 2012, he was recruited back to Monash as the Head of Immunoproteomics as a professorial fellow. He is currently an NHMRC investigator fellow.