Professor Gadd holds a personal chair in microbiology at the University of Dundee and is head of the Division of Environmental and Applied Biology in the School of Life Sciences. He is a highly respected researcher and author worldwide. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Biology, the American Academy of Microbiology and the Linnean Society. He received the Charles Thom award in 2004 from the Society for Industrial Microbiology for his outstanding research contribution to the applied microbiologyical sciences.