Richard Durbin
Genome informatics
Richard originally studied mathematics before developing an interest in biology at university and turning to do his PhD at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Initially he focused on the development of the nervous system, and contributed to neural network theory. Around 1990 John Sulston invited Richard to join the Sanger Institute at its foundation, to help with the computing and data processing needed for genome sequencing. Richard is now a leading expert in bioinformatics and in developing computer tools to understand biological processes. Richard became Head of the Informatics Division at Sanger and in 2004 was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society. Currently, Richard is a Principal Investigator at Sanger and leads resequencing projects on a number of organisms.
