Pat Nuttall is Director of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), the UK's centre of excellence for integrated research in land-based and freshwater environmental sciences, and part of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). She is Professor of Virology of the University of Oxford and a Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She was awarded the Ivanovsky Medal for Virology in 1996 by the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in 2000 for services to environmental sciences.