Richard Barton's Biography

Richard Barton, Research Fellow, Imperial College London

After a first degree in chemistry completed at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), Richard studied psychology and philosophy of science, and taught logic at The University of Auckland, before returning to chemistry to model dynamic processes on electrode surfaces. This was followed by a period of research in physical and analytical chemistry, before taking up an AGMARDT scholarship with Professor Charmian O’Connor, CBE, FRSC. Richard’s prize-winning PhD thesis involved work in protein purification and stability, and identified three catalytically-active enzymes. Subsequent work included and elucidation of the kinetics and stereoselective mechanism of specific catalyzed reactions and product stability using analytical techniques in quantitative 13C NMR spectroscopy. Richard took up a position in the UK Biotech industry, before a period freelancing in France. Subsequently he took a position as Research Associate in the (now) Biomolecular Medicine section in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London.  He is also currently associated with the Centre for Integrated Systems Biology Imperial College (CISBIC), and a major EU FP7 initiative on microbial metabolic contributions to fatty liver disease. Richard has been involved in the development of metabonomic technologies, including work in spectral editing methodology and in data filtering techniques aimed at enhancing information recovery from high-field NMR spectroscopic data obtained from biofluids and bio-extracts. In particular, these metabonomic techniques have been being applied to produce and interrogate an evolving metabolic database, with aims which include a more precisely "fingerprinting" the complex repertoire of metabolic markers associated with the pathogenesis of type II diabetes, metabolic models of aging, microbial metabolomics, and molecular epidemiology of human populations.