Michael Hastings is Programme Leader in Circadian Neurobiology at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. His most important contributions have been in understanding the molecular and cellular bases of the mammalian circadian clock, a fascinating area of biology with broad implications for human and animal health. In 2001, he left the Anatomy Department in Cambridge to join the LMB where he has proceeded to dissect the cellular and molecular pathways that generate rhythmicity in the central clock located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and in determining how this central clock synchronises local clocks in peripheral tissues. Increasingly it is recognised that a variety of disease states have significant interactions with clock function and his work on neurodegenerative diseases has offered potential chronobiological treatments to ameliorate the cognitive declines associated with these diseases.