Joshua Ladau is an internationally recognized expert on microbial science. His work lies at the nexus of agriculture, public health, and the ecology of microbes inhabiting Earth. He has pioneered our understanding of the global bacterial diversity in the oceans, the risks of invasion that microbial amendments pose, and worldwide links between the microbes inhabiting soils and allergic diseases in children.

Joshua is currently a senior soil scientist at Arva Intelligence, adjunct assistant professor at Louisiana State University in the Department of Biological Sciences, and research affiliate at the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to these positions, he worked as a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Joint Genome Institute, the Gladstone Institutes, and the Santa Fe Institute. He received his PhD and BS from Cornell University, graduating Summa Cum Laude. He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed, highly cited scientific articles, and his work has been featured in WIRED magazine and other news media.