Giles Edward Dixon Oldroyd is a professor at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, working on beneficial Legume symbioses in '' Medicago truncatula''. He has been a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award winner and the Society of Biology (SEB) President's Medal winner. From 2014 Giles has been in the top 1% of highly cited plant scientists across the world.

Education

Giles attended Huntington School, York before studying for his Honours degree in Biology at the

University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...

from 1990 to 1994. He completed his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in 1998 at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, studying plant/pathogen interactions in

tomatoes The tomato is the edible Berry (botany), berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to th ...

Career and research

After his PhD, he moved to

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

to work as a postdoctoral scientist studying legume/rhizobial interactions in the laboratory of Sharon R. Long. In 2002, Giles moved to the John Innes Centre to start his own research group and in 2017 he moved his research group to the Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge. In 2020 Giles was appointed to the Russel R Geiger Professorship of Crop Science in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge and Director of the new Crop Science Centre, a partnership between the University of Cambridge and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. Giles Oldroyd's work focuses on understanding the signalling mechanisms that allow the associations with these beneficial micro-organisms and the use of this information to transfer the nitrogen-fixing capability from legumes to cereal crops. His website says "Our work has implications for global agriculture, but we are most interested in the application of our work to benefit small-holder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa". In 2012 Giles Oldroyd was awarded a $10m grant from the

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was l ...

to begin the Engineering Nitrogen Symbiosis for Africa (ENSA) Project in collaboration with other symbiosis research groups. The aim of the research is to engineer cereal crops such as

Maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

to undergo the beneficial

Root Nodule Root nodules are found on the roots of plants, primarily legumes, that form a symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Under nitrogen-limiting conditions, capable plants form a symbiotic relationship with a host-specific strain of bacteria known a ...

symbiosis in order to obtain the nutrient Nitrogen without the application of agricultural

fertilisers A fertilizer (American English) or fertiliser (British English; see spelling differences) is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from ...

. As of March 2023, he has an

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of 81 according to

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Awards and honours

*BBSRC David Phillips Fellow 2002-2007 *

Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award The Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award was an award made by the Royal Society from 2000 to 2020. It was administered by the Royal Society and jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the UK Office of Science and Technology, to provide ...

2002-2005 * European Molecular Biology Organization Young Investigator Award 2005-2008 *Presidents Medal,

Society for Experimental Biology The Society for Experimental Biology is a learned society for animal, cell and plant biologists. It was founded in 1923 at Birkbeck College to "promote the art and science of experimental biology in all its branches". It aims to demonstrate the i ...

(SEB), 2006 *

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

young investigator 2009–Present *

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Top 1% Highly cited researcher 2014 *Elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) 2020

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oldroyd, Giles Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Alumni of the University of East Anglia University of California, Berkeley alumni Fellows of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge 21st-century British biologists British LGBT scientists Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences