Professor Gleb Yakubov holds the Chair in Food Biopolymers at the University of Leeds. He completed his PhD in Physical Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. Prior to joining Leeds, he held academic positions at the University of Nottingham and The University of Queensland, following nearly a decade in industrial R&D within the global consumer goods sector. Professor Yakubov’s research sits at the interface of colloid science, soft matter physics, polymer science, and biophysics. His work focuses on understanding how biopolymer structure and interactions govern the functionality of biopolymer systems, including foods, dietary fibre, plant cell walls, mucus, and biopolymer gels. He leads the Food Biopolymer Research Laboratory, which specialises in rheology, AFM force spectroscopy, and complex carbohydrate analysis. Among the laboratory’s recent innovations is the BioFluidic Microscope (BFM), an integrated platform combining ultra-fast confocal imaging with atomic force microscopy and nanofluidic functionality.