While on sabbatical at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, he discovered the Icosahedral Phase which opened the new science of quasiperiodic crystals. In 2011, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of quasicrystals.
He is the co-inventor of the leading next generation sequencing methodology which has made routine, accurate, low-cost sequencing of human genomes a reality. He created Solexa sequencing and co-founded the biotech company Solexa to commercialise the technology, and has remained a senior advisor to Solexa over the past decade.