Professor in Zoology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Mike Thompson is Professor in Zoology at the University of Sydney. He has been studying the incubation and embryonic development of reptiles since his PhD in the late 1970s. He has worked with the eggs of all major reptilian lineages, including turtles, tuatara, alligators, lizards and snakes in Australia, USA, and NZ and with collaborators from around the world. The main focus of his work in the last 20 years has been to understand the evolution of viviparity, mostly using skinks as a model. Together with a team of collaborators, he has published on the morphology and ultra-structure of placental tissues, the physiology of nutrient transport across the placenta and most recently, molecular aspects of the evolution of viviparity. Recently, he has paid particular attention to angiogenesis within the uterus and chorioallantois, and has been at the forefront of the use of next generation sequencing in reptilian tissue to identify important genes involved with placental function. After completing his PhD at Adelaide in 1983, he held postdoctoral positions at Victoria University in Wellington and at the University of Florida. He has been at the University of Sydney since 1989 and was Head of the School of Biological Sciences from 2005-2008, Associate Dean of Research from 2010 and Deputy Dean from 2011. He sits on the Scientific Program Committee for the International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology, and was elected as an Honorary Foreign Life Member of the American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology in 2012.