Professor Paul Reese became a member of the department in 1985. He set up the Microbial Chemistry Laboratory and acquired funding to furnish it. His group carried out research on the isolation, characterisation, partial synthesis and fungal transformation of terpene and steroid natural products in an effort to generate new analogues with enhanced biological activity. In all he supervised 15 PhD and 3 MPhil Chemistry students to completion and co-supervised a number of graduate students in other departments. Over 60 publications and three patents emanated from the work. He won a number of awards for his research and was elected as a Chartered Chemist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London) in 2002. He wrote the specifications for the Bruker 200 and 500 MHz NMR instruments purchased by the department in 1992 and 2001 respectively, and operated the 200 MHz spectrometer for its first two years of operation. During his term as Head the department continued to conduct rigorous research, produced high quality graduates, and impacted the teaching of chemistry in high schools through support of initiatives such as the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) Spectroscopy Workshops. Student retention was supported through programmes such as Peer-Led Team Learning. There was further acquisition of small instrumentation (polarimeter) and improvement in infrastructure. Professor Reese’s tenure as Head was short, as he proceeded on a postponed sabbatical in 2010. He was later appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science & Technology and served from 2013 to 2018.