Gareth Lycett was born in Mpraeso, Ghana before moving to England and going to school in Birmingham. He was trained in biochemistry at Surrey University (BSc) and completed his PhD with a focus on molecular genetics at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM). Gareth then took post-doctoral and fellowship positions at the Institute of Parasitology, University of Rome, the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Crete, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. He then took up a fellowship position back at LSTM, moving to tenure track and subsequently a faculty position in 2011.