He has been a research group leader at the Quadram Institute and the Earlham Institute on the Norwich Research Park since 2019.

The annual list is based on the Web of Science citation index and compiled by the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. It recognises the most influential researchers on a global scale by naming those ranking in the top 1 per cent by citations for their field over the last 10 years.

Prof Hildebrand’s group develops metagenomic tools to track bacterial strains at high resolutions, predict their genomic capabilities and explore associations to diseases. His research role is connecting departments across two Norwich research Institutes and the University of East Anglia (UEA).

“I am able to talk to so many talented and knowledgeable individuals from really diverse backgrounds,” he says. “This is hugely beneficial to getting new viewpoints on my research – and is quite fun usually, as well. In addition, the UEA and the Norwich institutes hold each different technologies allowing for exciting new angles in my research questions.”

Falk describes himself as “constantly fascinated” by bacterial evolution in the microbiome.

“The evolution of bacteria alongside humans is really interesting,” he says. “Most people probably only think yucky bacteria and diseases some bacterial species can bring. But they are really underappreciated in the impact that they have on us.”

“Microbes have been constant commensals to not only humans and other mammals, but we think now that this started 100’s of millions of years ago in the ocean with sponges and primitive commensal communities of bacteria that can grow on them.

For us, these symbiotic systems in our guts, in our mouth, skin and various other places on our bodies, have become a really essential part of our health, with bacteria providing so many beneficial functions to us. They live with us and help us break down complex foods, help us fend off “bad” bacteria that can cause diseases, produce vitamins that we can use, and this is really only a small part of the services we get from our bacteria and other microbes.”

“Beyond this, humans have mastered to use microbes to make nutrients in food more accessible or last longer – we ferment bread or beer, turn milk into cheese or yoghurt.

The human gut is thought to harbour anywhere from 200 to 800 different bacterial species and the genetic diversity in this community is only now being fully characterized using novel sequencing technologies and advanced bioinformatic algorithms.

“Remarkably, gut bacteria are able to communicate directly with the brain through the vagus nerve,” says Dr Hildebrand.

“This connection is known as the microbiota-gut-brain axis – a two-way connection between gut and mind. We recently tested how changing diet can help Parkinson’s disease patients and found that switching to a more fibre-rich diet can really help the gut microbiome to produce the metabolites you would normally expect in a healthy gut. The microbiome does not only influence physical health but has a huge impact on our mental health too.”

Prof Hildebrand is particularly interested in developing specialised algorithms to help answer complex questions on large biological datasets, the metagenomic view of whole microbial ecosystems, and environmental metagenomics.

He began his career at the University of Constance in Germany and the University of Sussex in the UK, using changes in bacterial genomes to understand bacterial evolution and track outbreaks of pathogens. During his PhD at the University of Brussels, he further specialised in bacterial associations with complex diseases such as obesity, diabetes, neurological disorders that were further refined during a postdoc at EMBL Heidelberg in Germany before coming to the Norwich Research Park in 2019.

Prof Hildebrand and his group have delivered a wider impact through demonstrating the link between various diseases and how they influence the human microbiome, exploring the soil microbiome and developing novel bioinformatic tools, running international training courses, supervising PhD students, and delivering public engagement activities such as his recurring interactions with Pint of Science.