Alasdair MacGowan is Consultant in Infection at North Bristol NHS Trust and Professor of Antimicrobial Therapeutics at the University of Bristol. He has led a mixed NHS-academic research group in the area of antimicrobial chemotherapy for over twenty-five years, and provides medical input into the National Antibiotic Assay Reference Laboratory at Southmead Hospital. He has a research interest in antibacterial pharmacokinetics/dynamics, rapid diagnostics, antimicrobial resistance in the community, and patient and public involvement in infection research. He holds several Programme Grants related to antibacterial drug development from the EU’s IMI, has a Research for Patient Benefit Grant on antibiotic optimisation to prevent emergence of resistance, and was microbiological lead on a joint MRC (UK) China project studying antimicrobial resistance in rural China. At present, active grants total >£15m. He is a former President of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC), is a member of the BSAC Standing Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing, and is UK representative on European CDC Expert Committee EUCAST. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh), Royal College of Pathologists, and was a first title bearer of Fellowship of ESCMID.