School of Life Sciences

Chris Exley graduated from Stirling in 1985 with a 2i Honours degree in Biology. It was during the 4th and final year of my degree that I undertook my first research on aluminium. The title of my undergraduate thesis was : "Aluminium toxicity to Atlantic salmon smolts, Salmo salar, and juvenile rainbow trout, Salmo gairdneri, in acid waters". I remained at Stirling to undertake a PhD in the Institute of Aquaculture, funded by ICI and supervised by Professor JD Birchall OBE FRS (ICI). The title of my PhD is: "Amelioration of aluminium toxicity in Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L., with particular reference to aluminium/silicon interactions". I followed my PhD with a 3 year ICI postdoctoral fellowship in the Institute of Aquaculture (1989-1992) before moving to Keele University in the summer of 1992 as an ICI Research Fellow (1992-1994) to help JD Birchall establish The Unit of Inorganic Chemistry and Materials Science in the Department of Chemistry. In 1994 I was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in "The Bioinorganic Chemistry of Aluminium and Silicon".

I am interested in the myriad ways that aluminium impacts upon life on earth. In particular we have studied the interaction of aluminium with silicic acid to form hydroxyaluminosilicates and the importance of this interaction in keeping aluminium out of life. Other areas of interest include what we define as the biological availability of aluminium in which we are trying to understand how physical, chemical and biological processes combine to determine the accumulation, distribution, metabolism and excretion of aluminium. These interests cover all forms of life, from microbes to man, impacting upon fundamental bioinorganic chemistry as well as the latter allied to medicine and in particular neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis. I also have an ongoing interest in biosilicification.

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