Mike Blatt studied in Canada and the USA, obtaining a dual first from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He was a Fullbright-Hays Graduate Fellow in Germany, a Fellow of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and held a NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University Medical School before moving to the University of Cambridge, UK in 1983 on a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship. Mike was a Lecturer, Reader, and held a Personal Chair at the University of London, Wye College and Imperial College. He took up the Regius Chair of Botany at Glasgow University in 2001 by Royal Warrant, where he heads the Plant Science Group of nine academic colleagues and some 50 postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers and technicians. He is a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (USA), the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Biology, and the James Hutton Institute. He has held a number of advisory roles and serves within the UK and internationally, including as a founding member of the BBSRC panel of experts, external assessor for the Chilean Science Foundation, NASA (USA), and the Swedish Science Directorate. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the most highly-cited international journal in the field, PLANT PHYSIOLOGY. Mike’s research interests center around the biophysics and physiology of membranes, especially in relation to the function of stomatal guard cells and their role in regulating gas exchange for photosynthesis in plant leaves.