Professor Ian Crute has been Director of Rothamsted Research (RRes) since 1999. Ian obtained a First Class Honours degree in botany and a PhD in plant pathology from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. From 1973 to 1986 he was a research group leader in plant pathology at what is now Warwick-HRI (formerly Horticulture Research International - Wellesbourne). His research concerned the genetics of plant-pathogen interactions and studies of fungicide resistance during which he worked in close collaboration with industry. In 1986 he obtained a Fulbright Fellowship and went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA to work on the genetics of resistance to fungal pathogens using "rapid cycling" brassicas as a research tool. On returning to England in 1987 he moved to HRI East Malling (now East Malling Research) as Head of the Crop and Environment Protection Department where his responsibilities included plant pathology and entomology research on perennial crops. At East Malling he established a research group that developed Arabidopsis as model for studying mechanisms of disease resistance in plants. He moved back to HRI at Warwick in 1993 and after 2 years as Head of Plant Pathology (with responsibilities across six geographically dispersed HRI sites), he became Director at Wellesbourne with overall responsibility for the research direction at the site until his move to Rothamsted.