Professor Jack A. Gilbert earned his Ph.D. from Unilever and Nottingham University, UK in 2002 and received his postdoctoral training at Queens University, Canada. From 2005-2010 he was a senior scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK; and from 2010-2018 he was Group Leader for Microbial Ecology at Argonne National Laboratory, a Professor of Surgery, and Director of The Microbiome Center at University of Chicago. In 2019 he moved to University of California San Diego, where he is a Professor in Pediatrics and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Associate Vice Chancellor for Marine Science, and Director of both the Microbiome and Metagenomics Center and the Soil Health Center. Dr. Gilbert uses molecular analysis to test fundamental hypotheses in microbial ecology. He cofounded the Earth Microbiome Project and American Gut Project, as well as is the founding Editor in Chief of mSystems journal. He has authored more than 450 peer reviewed publications and book chapters on microbial ecology. In 2017 he co-authored “Dirt is Good”, a popular science guide to the microbiome and children’s health. Dr. Gilbert founded BiomeSense Inc in 2018 to produce automated microbiome sensors. In 2021 he became the UCSD PI and Consortium Chair for the National Institute of Health’s $175M Nutrition for Precision Medicine program. In 2023 he became President of Applied Microbiology International and won the IFF Microbiome Science Prize, and in 2025 was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology and became the co-chair for the new IUCN Microbial Conservation Specialist Group.