Professor Robert Poole is West Riding Professor of Microbiology at the University of Sheffield. He has >35 years’ experience of bacterial physiology and bioenergetics, in particular O2-, CO- and NO-reactive proteins, and has published >300 papers (h=48, 2013). He was Chairman of the Plant and Microbial Sciences Committee of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and has held numerous grants from BBSRC, the Wellcome and Leverhulme Trusts and the EC. He coordinates an international SysMO systems biology consortium. He published pioneering studies of bacterial oxidases and globins and discovered the bacterial flavohaemoglobin gene (hmp) and its function in NO detoxification He recently published the first systems analyses of responses of bacteria to novel carbon monoxide-releasing molecules (CORMs) and is a world leader in NO, CO and CORM research.