Jonas Emsley received a BSc in Biochemistry and Genetics from the University of Nottingham and gained his PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London under the supervision of Sir Tom Blundell. He was awarded a Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust and appointed to a lectureship at the University of Leicester Biochemistry Department in 2000. He was promoted to Reader in 2004 and moved to the University of Nottingham to found the Crystallography Laboratory which is within the Medicinal Chemistry and Structural Biology Research Division of the School of Pharmacy.