Thomas Helleday, PhD obtained a lectureship at the Institute for Cancer Studies, University of Sheffield, UK, in 2000 where he research basic mechanisms of DNA damage response and repair and made the discovery of the PARP inhibitor treatment in BRCA mutated cancers. Dr Helleday became professor at both University of Sheffield and Stockholm University in 2006, prior to being recruited as MRC Professor of Cancer Therapeutics at the MRC/CRUK Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology at the University of Oxford. In 2012, he was called to the Söderberg Professor of Translational Medicine and Chemical Biology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. In 2018 he returned to University of Sheffield to direct the Weston Park Cancer Centre. Following the corona pandemic, he returned to Karolinska Institutet in 2020 to focus on translational research in his group. The focus of the research in the Helleday lab has been basic DNA repair research translated into novel treatments. Dr Helleday has received numerous international awards and prizes such as; the Eppendorf-Nature Young European Investigator Award 2005, the European Association for Cancer Research Young Cancer Researchers Award 2007, the Swiss Bridge Award 2008, the Svedberg Award 2008, Carcinogenesis Young Investigator Award 2010 and ERC Advanced Grant Awards (2010 and 2016).