Graham Shields is Professor of Chemical Geology at University College London. He received his PhD from the ETH Zurich in 1997 on the chemical and isotopic evolution of the oceans during the Ediacaran through Cambrian bioradiations when animals first diversified into shelled and muscular forms. Since that time he has worked in France, Canada, Australia, Germany and China as well as the UK on diverse aspects of Earth history and sedimentary geochemistry. Currently, his research group at UCL explores how life and its physical environment have co-evolved through geological time. Graham is the scientific coordinator of a joint UKRI-NSFC programme on Biosphere Evolution, Transitions and Resilience (BETR) and chair of the Earth System Science group of the Geological Society of London.