David Richardson is Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, Enterprise and Engagement and Professor of Microbial Biochemistry at the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the Norwich Research Park. His research group is active in the area of bacterial bioenergetics, particularly with regard to the respiratory reactions of the nitrogen and iron cycles. This encompasses the study of soil bacteria such as Paracoccus denitrificans, food-borne pathogens such as Salmonella Typhimurium and bacteria involved in mineral metal reduction such as Shewanella oneidensis.

David graduated in Biochemistry from the University of Keele in 1985 undertaking an honours research project in plant photosynthesis under the supervision of Dr John Mills. He then studied for his Ph.D. in the Biochemistry Department of the University of Birmingham (1985–1988) under the joint supervision of Professors Baz Jackson and Stuart Ferguson, during which time he worked on the bioenergetics of the bacterial phototroph Rhodobacter capsulatus. In 1988, he moved to Stuart Ferguson’s laboratory at the University of Oxford to work on the biochemistry of denitrification in Paracoccus denitrificans. In 1991, he was appointed to a lectureship in the School of Biological Sciences of the UEA. He was promoted to a Readership in 1998, to a Chair in 2001, appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science in 2008 and Pro Vice Chancellor in 2011. In 1999, he was awarded the Fleming Prize Lecture by the Society for General Microbiology and he recieved a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award in 2007.

David has been a member of the Biochemical Society since 1985 and is also a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Society for General Microbiology. He has been a member and secretary of the Bioenergetics Group Committee of the Biochemical Society (1997–2003) and sat on the Meetings Committee (2000–2003). He has been on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (2003–2008), an Associate Editor of Microbiology (2000–2004) and a member of the Faculty of 1000.