Phil Newton is Research Dean for Environment at the University of Reading. His career has stretched across the environmental science spectrum; enabling research (as NERC Director of Science), doing research (as an oceanographer), translating research (as Director of Science at Defra’s Food & Environment Research Agency), communicating research (as a Nature editor), as well as teaching and supervising to MSc & PhD.

Following a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry at University of Bristol, he completed his PhD on the surface characteristics of particles in natural waters at the University of East Anglia (UEA). He then took up a Royal Society European Exchange fellowship in Paris, followed by a NERC post-doctoral position at UEA. Dr Newton joined the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique in France in 1992, leading a marine biogeochemistry research group.

Dr Newton next spent five years at Nature, responsible for the quality of the environmental science content of the journal, before moving to the Natural Environment Research Council – initially responsible for marine sciences, and from 2008-2013 as Director of Science, establishing programmes such as RAPID and Living With Environmental Change. Before joining University of Reading, he joined Defra's Food & Environment Research Agency as interim Director of Science.

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