Clive is a microbial geneticist with primary research interests in how microbes and plants recognise each other and develop a nitrogen-fixing symbiosis, and in microbial evolution by horizontal gene transfer and adaptive mutation. He is one of two international partners of the Centre for Carbohydrate Recognition and Signalling based in Denmark and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Plant-microbe interactions, horizontal gene transfer, symbiotic nitrogen fixation, bacterial genetics and genomics