Richard Durbin

Professor Richard Durbin (FRS) is a computational biologist at the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, and Associate Faculty member at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. His work spans computational methods development, large-scale genomics projects, and evolutionary studies.

• Academic Affiliation: Professor of Genetics (University of Cambridge)
• Research Institute: Associate Faculty (Wellcome Sanger Institute)
• Key Projects: 1000 Genomes Project, UK10K Project, Gorilla Genome Sequencing

Research Interests

Durbin's group focuses on:

• Evolutionary Genomics: Human population history through modern and ancient DNA, Malawi cichlid fish speciation with adaptive introgression
• Computational Methods: Burrows-Wheeler transform algorithms (BWA), variant call format (VCF), variation graph mapping (vg package)
• Genome Assembly: Long-read sequencing techniques for high-contiguity reference genomes across vertebrates

Scientific Contributions

• Co-author of Biological Sequence Analysis (HMM methods for gene finding)
• Co-developer of ACeDB software and founding contributor to WormBase, Pfam, TreeFam, Ensembl

Scientific Awards

• Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) - Recognized for outstanding contributions to computational biology