Dr Sharp graduated in Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham in 1979. He established his interest inneuropharmacology of CNS transmitters in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Nottingham where he obtained his PhD in 1983.

Dr Sharp spent the next three years in the Department of Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm with Urban Ungerstedt as a SERC and Karolinska Institute Overseas Fellow.

In 1986 he joined the MRC Unit of Clinical Pharmacology in Oxford, and was appointed to the MRC External Scientific Staff in 1993. Following a further six years in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology, he joined the Department of Pharmacology at the start of the new millennium. Throughout his time in Oxford, Dr Sharp’s research has focused on the pharmacology and physiology of monoamine transmitters, particularly in relation to the treatment and cause of mood disorder. Dr Sharp is a member of the executive committee of the Serotonin club.