Professor Marcus Pembrey is Founding Chair of Trustees at the Progress Educational Trust (PET), having founded the charity together with Viscount Janric Craigavon and Dr Virginia Bolton. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Visiting Professor of Paediatric Genetics at the University of Bristol, where (together with Professor Jean Golding) he established the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), widely regarded as the most comprehensive general population birth cohort in the world. Together with Dr Kirsty Horsey, Dr Vivienne Raper and Chris Chatterton (editors of PET's free weekly email news digest, commentary service and website BioNews) he runs the BioNews internship scheme, which provides practical science writing training and experience for PhD students.

Marcus was previously Vice Dean and Professor of Paediatric Genetics at University College London's Institute of Child Health, Consultant Clinical Geneticist at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, and Consultant Adviser in Genetics to the Chief Medical Officer at the UK Government's Department of Health. He helped to establish the cell line and DNA resource for the 1958 birth cohort housed in the ALSPAC laboratory, and through this is a Principal Investigator of the Wellcome Trust's Case Control Consortium. He has written over 150 peer-reviewed papers in publications including Nature, Science, Cell and the Lancet, and he has written textbooks and guides for the general public, most recently working with the Nuffield Foundation on the development of its Science in Society course.