Telford’s has worked on various problems in animal molecular systematics in comparative developmental studies in the arthropods and flatworms. Current research areas include molecular comparisons of lophotrochozoan larvae, phylogeny and development of the mandibulate arthropods and comparative genomic studies of ecdysozoans and deuterostomes. Telford gained his doctoral degree from Oxford University and has subsequently worked in Paris, at the National History Museum in London, and in Cambridge. He was a recipient of a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship and an EMBO Young Investigator award in 2000 and received the Bicentennial Medal from the Linnean Society in 2007.