Phillip Poole
Project leader
University of Oxford
Philip Poole did his PhD in Australia before coming to the UK to do post-doctoral work at Oxford. He then moved to the University of Reading where he was Professor of Microbial Physiology before moving to the John Innes Centre in Norwich as a principal investigator. In 2013, he took up a personal chair as Professor of Plant Microbiology at the University of Oxford, where he is head of Molecular Plant Sciences in the new Department of Biology. He studies the physiology of bacterial growth and survival in the rhizosphere, colonisation of roots and how bacteria establish symbiotic interactions with plants. A particular focus of his research is the physiology and biochemistry of nitrogen fixation in legume nodules and on cereal roots and how this underpins global nitrogen cycling.