Professor Jack A. Gilbert earned his PhD from Unilever and Nottingham University, UK (2002) and received his postdoctoral training at Queens University, Canada.

From 2005 to 2010, Jack was a senior scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK; and from 2010 to 2018, he was a professor of Surgery and director of The Microbiome Center at the University of Chicago. In 2019, he moved to the University of California San Diego, where he is a professor in Pediatrics and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Jack uses molecular analysis to test fundamental hypotheses in microbial ecology. He co-founded the Earth Microbiome Project and the American Gut Project. He has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters on microbial ecology. He is the founding editor-in-Chief of mSystems journal. In 2014, he was recognized on Crain's Business Chicago's 40 Under 40 list, and in 2015 he was listed as one of the 50 most influential scientists by Business Insider and in the Brilliant Ten by Popular Scientist. In 2016, he won the Altemeier Prize from the Surgical Infection Society and the WH Pierce Prize from the Society for Applied Microbiology for research excellence. He also co-authored Dirt is Good (2017), a popular science guide to the microbiome and children's health. He founded BiomeSense Inc. in 2018 to produce automated microbiome sensors, and is chief scientific advisor for 4Inno.