Scott Patterson (Gilead Sciences Inc., CA, USA) speaks to Ashling Cannon, Journal Development Editor at BioTechniques , about his career. Patterson is a biochemist and proteomics and biomarker/translational expert with over 30 years of industry experience following 13 years in an academic setting. Patterson earned his BSc and PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of Queensland (Australia) while working full time in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, rising to a Senior Research Officer. Throughout his career, Patterson has been actively involved in advancing technologies, how they can be applied to address biological questions and the interplay of bioinformatics and large datasets leveraging biomarkers and diagnostics. He has held pivotal roles at renowned institutions and companies such as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (NY, USA), Amgen, Inc. (CA, USA), Celera Genomics Group (MD, USA) and Gilead Sciences, Inc. Notably, he served as a Staff Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and was honored with the Long Island Biological Association New Investigator award in addition to being the 2002 Barnett Lecturer at Northeastern University (MA, USA). In early 2015 Patterson joined Gilead Sciences, Inc., bringing his extensive expertise to lead biomarker discovery and development as well as in vitro diagnostics initiatives across all therapeutic domains.