About

Leadbetter has been on the Caltech faculty since 2000. Prior to this,  he spent two years at The University of Iowa in the laboratory of National Academician E. Peter Greenberg (now at UW-Seattle), where he was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biosciences Related to the Environment. Leadbetter graduated with a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Michigan State University, where he was a participant in the NSF Science and Technology Center for Microbial Ecology under the tutelage of John A. Breznak. 

He served as co-director of the Marine Biological Laboratory  Microbial Diversity Summer Program in Woods Hole with Dianne Newman during the summers of 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 (in previous summers dating back to 1982,  he had participated as either a laboratory dishwasher, student, graduate teaching assistant, or guest faculty for the very same program).