Rate My Professor Kiran Patil

Kiran Patil is Professor of Molecular Systems Biology in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, where he also serves as an MRC Investigator and Director of Research at the MRC Toxicology Unit. He studied Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India, and obtained his PhD in Systems Biology from the Technical University of Denmark under Prof. Jens Nielsen. Following his PhD, Patil was appointed Assistant Professor at DTU, focusing on transcriptional regulation and metabolic engineering. In 2010, he joined the Structural and Computational Biology Unit at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. He relocated to the University of Cambridge in 2019 as Director of Research at the MRC Toxicology Unit and was appointed Professor of Molecular Systems Biology in October 2022.

The Patil Group's research investigates microbiome-drug and microbiome-pollutant interactions to uncover their contributions to side effects and toxicity, with an overarching goal to discover and model complex (xeno-)metabolic networks emerging in the gut microbiota. This interdisciplinary programme combines computational approaches—such as metabolic modelling, bioinformatics, chemo-informatics, and machine learning—with experimental methods including in vitro microbiomics, metabolomics, and chemical genomics. Key publications include “Multimodal interactions of drugs, natural compounds and pollutants with the gut microbiota” (Nature Reviews Microbiology, 2022), “Bioaccumulation of therapeutic drugs by human gut bacteria” (Nature, 2021), “Polarization of microbial communities between competitive and cooperative metabolism” (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2021), “Extensive impact of non-antibiotic drugs on human gut bacteria” (Nature, 2018), and “Nutritional preferences of human gut bacteria reveal their metabolic idiosyncrasies” (Nature Microbiology, 2018). Patil is an MRC Investigator and ERC Investigator; he received an ERC Proof-of-Concept grant in 2025 to develop anti-cancer live biotherapeutics and was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in 2025. He serves as Deputy Editor for PLOS Computational Biology and has featured in BBC discussions on forever chemicals and drug-microbe interactions.