Terry McGenity is a Reader at the University of Essex, UK. His PhD, investigating the microbial ecology of ancient salt deposits (University of Leicester), was followed by postdoctoral positions at the Japan Marine Science and Technology
Centre (JAMSTEC, Yokosuka) and the Postgraduate Research Institute for Sedimentology (University of Reading). His overarching research interest is to understand how microbial communities function and interact to influence major biogeochemical processes. He worked as a postdoc with Ken Timmis at the University of Essex, where he was inspired to investigate microbial interactions with hydrocarbons at multiple scales, from communities to cells, and as both a source of food and stress. He has broad interests in microbial ecology and diversity, particularly with respect to carbon cycling (especially the second most abundantly produced hydrocarbon in the atmosphere, isoprene), and is driven to better understand how microbescope with, or flourish in hypersaline, desiccated and poly-extreme environments.
He was already section editor at the first edition of this multi-volume Handbook of Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology (2010), and he is co-editor for the 17-volume Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology Protocols 2016.
