Rate My Professor Will Gaze

Professor Will Gaze is Professor of Microbiology in the Department of Public Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Exeter Medical School, affiliated with the European Centre for Environment and Human Health in Cornwall. He has over 20 years of experience researching antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in farmed and natural environments, employing environmental sampling and diverse analytical methods. Leading a group of more than 20 researchers funded by over £4 million in grants, his work explores AMR ecology, evolution, and public health aspects, including landscape-scale dissemination, human exposure, and transmission through in situ and in vivo experiments. Current projects align with WHO, EU, and UK AMR action plans, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches.

Gaze's research has profoundly impacted global AMR strategies. With Dr. Anne Leonard, he showed surfers carry three times more AMR bacteria in their gut than non-surfers, underscoring environmental risks. He co-authored the UNEP Frontiers Report chapter on AMR with Professor Michael Depledge, influencing United Nations and WHO responses. Gaze advises UK and international governments, WHO, UNEP, European Environment Agency, UK Environment Agency, and Defra. He received a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship for 'the environmental dimension of antimicrobial resistance: informing policy, regulation and practice.' He leads a UK-Argentina grant on AMR in beef feedlots, combining evidence synthesis, modeling, microbiology, and evolutionary biology. Invited to speak on AMR across five continents, his contributions include key publications such as 'Heavy metal pollution and co-selection for antibiotic resistance: A microbial palaeontology approach' (2019) and 'Role played by the environment in the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance' (2021), amassing over 10,000 citations.