Goodacre was born in Changi, Singapore, and was educated from 1978 at the Monmouth School, in Gwent, Wales, where he went on to study Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics at 'A' level. He received a 2i-class honours degree in Microbiology from the University of Bristol, where he was a student at Badock HallHalls of residence at the University of Bristol, and remained to study for a PhD in pyrolysis-MS for bacterial identification with the bacteriologist Dr Roger Berkeley at the University of Bristol, defending his thesis in 1992. While in Bristol he met his wife: they married in 1991 and have one daughter.
Career
Following his PhD, Goodacre took up a postdoctoral research position at Aberystwyth University between 1992 and 1995, and began his own research laboratory in 1995, with the award of a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship, which he held until 1999, when he received tenure as a lecturer in Microbiology at Aberystwyth University. He moved to UMIST, which merged to become the University of Manchester, first as Reader in Analytical Science and then Professor of Biological Chemistry, from 2005–2018. Goodacre was then recruited to the University of Liverpool to become Director of the Centre for Metabolomics Research. Goodacre is the founder and current Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed scientific journalMetabolomics. He is an Editorial Advisory Board member for the following journals: Analyst ; Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis ; Spectrochimica Acta A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy. Goodacre is a Founder and Director of the Metabolomics Society and a Director of the Metabolic Profiling Forum. He currently serves as a Committee member of Royal Society of Chemistry's Analytical Division Council and is a Trustee of the Analytical ChemistryTrust Fund. Goodacre has supervised, and graduated, 52 PhD, 7 MSc and 2 MPhil postgraduate students. In 2019 Goodacre was included in the 2019 Power List of The Analytical Scientist.
Research
Goodacre started Metabolomics research in the early 2000s with Douglas Kell. He helped to develop long-term metabolomics which allows fusion of GC-MS and LC-MS data collected over 12–24 months - which is based on mathematical corrections which effectively removes any chromatographic and mass spectrometry instrumental drift. This approach has been applied to generate profiles from ~1200 normal human serum samples and to investigate human frailty in ageing populations of approx. 2000 individuals. Standardisation in Metabolomics is important and Goodacre was part of the Metabolomics Standards Initiative which help establish metabolite identification reporting standards, which have been very well adopted by the field. He chaired part of the MSI's data analysis workgroup and these minimum reporting standards were published. Goodacre was the first to show that surface-enhanced Raman scattering can be used for bacterial identification and to use Spatially Offset Raman spectroscopy for through-container authentication of spirit drinks. As of 2020, Goodacre has authored two international patents, published >400 peer-reviewed research articles and has an H-index of 92, and edited two books on metabolomics. Goodacre is known for innovative science teaching and scholarship, including the incorporation of music into formal lecture schedules, partly to aid mental well-being.
