Professor David J Richardson is a bacterial biochemist who has used a range of disciplines to unravel respiratory processes of anaerobic bacteria from both soils and marine environments and the human gastro-intestinal tract. His work has revealed the great adaptive flexibility of highly branched pathways of respiratory chains by the isolation, structural characterisation and functional analysis of their enzymes and electron transfer proteins. His work on the nitrogen cycle as well as the mechanisms by which bacteria use insoluble extracellular minerals as respiratory electron acceptors is now showing major impacts in environmental and climate science, industrial biotechnology and synthetic biology. Richardson’s contributions have been recognised by the award of the Society for General Microbiology Fleming Medal (1999), a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Fellowship (2008-2013), and by appointment to the Council of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (2012). He has published >200 peer-reviewed papers that have been cited more than 9000 times. His research currently has an H-index of 54 (Google Scholar, October 2013). Key Research Interests and Expertise Respiratory flexibility in Bacteria Electron transfer at microbe-mineral interfaces New approaches to studies of the nitrogen cycle in wastewater treatment plants Biochemistry, genetics, and molecular ecology of bacterial denitrification The regulation of bacterial nitrous oxide production Novel methods for second generation bioalcohol production Nitric oxide metabolism in pathogens and leguminous root nodules Bacterial semi-conductor mediated photocatalysis Enzyme based biosensors for nitrogen oxides and nitrogen oxyanions Microbial electrocatalysis