Rob Knight (born 1976 in Dunedin, New Zealand)[1] is a professor at the University of California, San Diego and the co-founder of the American Gut Project. He is also a co-founder of the Earth Microbiome Project. His lab’s research involves the development of laboratory and computational techniques to characterize the microbiomes of humans, animals, and the environment.
Knight completed a BSc in biochemistry at the University of Otago and a PhD at Princeton University on the Origin and Evolution of the Genetic Code in 2001.[2] Until 2014, he was a professor at the University of Colorado – Boulder.[3]
He did an IAmA on reddit and also taught a microbiome course on Coursera. He gave a TED Talk in 2014 on the role microbes play on our health.[4][5] Later this idea was expanded into the book Follow Your Gut: The Enormous Impact of Tiny Microbes,[6][7][8] written with science journalist Brendan Buhler and published by Simon & Schuster.
In 2015, he received the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science.[9]
