Professor Robert K Poole is Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at the University of Sheffield, UK. He was previously West Riding Professor of Microbiology at Sheffield and until 1996 held a Personal Chair in Microbiology at King's College London. During his long career, he has been awarded several research Fellowships, and taken sabbatical leave at the Australian National University, Kyoto University and Cornell University. His career-long interests have been in the areas of bacterial respiratory metabolism, metal-microbe interactions and bioactive small gas molecules. In particular, he has made notable contributions to bacterial terminal oxidases and resistance to nitric oxide with implications for bacterial pathogenesis. He co-discovered the flavohaemoglobin Hmp, now recognised as the preeminent mechanism of nitric oxide resistance in bacteria. He has served as Chairman of numerous research council grant committees, held research grants for over 40 years and published extensively (h-index, 2024 = 70). He served on several Institute review panels in the UK and overseas.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Society of Biology.