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Department of Genetics

 

The Department of Genetics is delighted to announce that Dr Richard Durbin has accepted the Al Kindi Chair in the Department of Genetics. He will move from his current position at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and join the Department on 1 October 2017.

Durbin portrait in pageRichard has contributed many major developments at the forefront of contemporary genomics and genetics.  For the past 25 years, his career has been dedicated to the development and application of mathematical and computational approaches to study genomes. His work has been ground-breaking. Not only has he led many of the major human genome sequencing initiatives including the generation of the population-based maps of human variation that are now embedded in contemporary human genomic analysis, but also he has driven the development of the software and data formats for the alignment and analysis of these large sequencing projects. His leadership in this arena has enabled the provision of public genome resources across the whole discipline.

Richard’s future academic plans within the Department will make his research and expertise more directly accessible to students and will enrich our Departmental activities. More widely, his work provides a foundation for new strategic directions in computational and mathematical genomics across the School and University, and will continue to shape the future of genome biology locally, nationally and internationally.

Anne Ferguson-Smith, 15 May 2017