Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research, Enterprise & Engagement

Professor David Richardson
D.Richardson@uea.ac.uk
+44 (0)1603 593250

Professor David Richardson is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Enterprise and Engagement and holds a Chair of Microbial Biochemistry in the School of Biological Sciences at UEA. He first came to UEA as a lecturer in 1991, he was then promoted to Reader in 1998, then Chair in 2001 and Dean in 2007. He took on the rol eof Pro-Vice-Chanclelor in 2011. Prior to this David began his research career as a PhD student in the University of Birmingham (1985-88) and moved on to undertake post-doctoral research in the University of Oxford (1988-91).

David Richardson’s research interests lie in the characterization of the microbiology and biochemistry of important biogeochemical mineral cycles, with particular focus on the nitrogen and iron cycles. David works in collaboration with colleagues in the Centre for Molecular and Structural Biochemistry to characterize biochemical reactions of these cycles in whole cells and cell communities, study gene expression and protein synthesis in response to key environmental parameters, study electron transfer between proteins involved in respiratory reactions of these cycles and purify and characterize the enzymes involved using spectroscopic and structural methodologies. The target organisms they study include soil bacteria, plant-symbiotic bacteria and pathogenic bacteria. Their work benefits from collaboration with colleagues working in the nearby Institute of Food Research and John Innes Centre. The work has implications for the release of globally important greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide in agriculture, mechanisms of resistance to cytoxins, such as nitric oxide radicals, in pathogenic bacteria and can find application through the use of some of the enzymes involved in biosensors.

David Richardson was awarded the Fleming Medal in 1999 and he is a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Awardee.