Jeremy Nicholson is Professor of Biological Chemistry at Imperial College London. He has developed novel spectroscopic and multivariate statistical techniques to probe the metabolic biochemistry of cells and biological fluids. The objective of this work has been to understand molecular mechanisms of disease, discover novel biomarkers of tissue injury and to probe metabolic interactions between symbiotic gut microbes and host that may be significant in the development and treatment of disease. In his recent appointment as Head of the newly formed Department of Surgery and Cancer, he is spearheading the translation of metabolic phenotyping and systems biology approaches to a wide range of point-of-care clinical settings.