Academic Faculty
Our research is built upon our Faculty of almost 40 research leaders. Each develops his or her own hypothesis-driven research, seeking answers to important biomedical questions. The Faculty member leads a team of postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and support staff.
The research projects of each Faculty member must strengthen our overarching areas of Human Genetics, Mouse and Zebrafish Genetics, Pathogen Genetics and Bioinformatics.
Faculty members often lead national or international collaborative programmes. In addition, most are responsible for one or more of our main resources, such as sequencing programmes or database development.
David Adams - Experimental cancer genetics
David performs forward genetic screens to uncover cancer genes and pathways and leads a programme to decode the
genomes of several mouse strains.
David's email, profile and project
Carl Anderson - Statistical genetics
Carl applies statistical methodology to the analysis of large-scale genetic data sets in a bid to better understand
the causes of several common human diseases.
Carl's email, profile and project
Jeffrey Barrett - Medical genomics
Jeffrey develops and applies statistical and computational methods for elucidating the genetic factors in complex
human diseases, especially those involving autoimmunity.
Jeffrey's email, profile and project
Inês Barroso - Metabolic disease group
Inês is Joint Head of Human Genetics and represents Human Genetics on the Board of Management. Inês
established the Sanger Institute's Metabolic Disease Group, which uses genetic and genomic approaches to understand
the aetiology of common and rare forms of metabolic disease.
Inês' email, profile and project
Matt Berriman - Parasite genomics
Matt leads a programme in the genomics of neglected tropical disease parasites, including helminths such as
schistosomes, tapeworms, roundworms, hookworms, threadworms and whipworms.
Matt's email, profile and project
Oliver Billker - Malaria programme
Oliver uses experimental genetics in rodent models to study the basic biology of malaria parasites and their
interactions with host and mosquito vectors.
Oliver's email, profile and project
Allan Bradley - Mouse genomics
Allan Bradley leads the Sanger Institute's Mouse Genomics Team, which uses the mouse as a model system to investigate
the function of individual genes. He is former Director of the Institute, where he holds the title of Director
Emeritus.
Allan's email, profile and project
Peter Campbell - Cancer genome project
Dr Peter Campbell is a group leader in the Institute's Cancer Genome Project. His research focuses on the use of
next-generation sequencing technologies for annotating cancer genomes.
Peter's email, profile and project
Panos Deloukas - Genetics of complex traits in humans
Panos leads the Genetics of complex traits in humans Group, whose focus is on coronary artery disease and myocardial
infarction.
Panos's email, profile and project
Gordon Dougan - Microbial pathogenesis
Gordon is the Board of Management representative for the area of pathogens and head of the Microbial pathogenesis
group, which investigates the relationship between pathogens and hosts.
Gordon's email, profile and project
Richard Durbin - Genome informatics
Richard is Joint Head of Human Genetics. Richard has worked on many areas of biological sequence analysis, and
currently focuses on studying human genetic variation by genome-wide resequencing using new sequencing
technologies.
Richard's email, profile and project
Daniel Gaffney - Population and evolutionary genomics of gene regulation
Daniel's group combines computational and statistical methods with high-throughput experimental techniques to
understand the role played by changes in gene regulation in disease susceptibility and human evolution.
Daniel's email, profile and project
Tim Hubbard - Vertebrate genome analysis
Tim leads the Vertebrate Genome Analysis group, which generates and presents core vertebrate genome annotation and
maintains the reference genome sequences.
Tim's email, profile and project
Matthew Hurles - Genomic mutation and genetic disease
Matt's group aims to elucidate the genetic architecture of developmental disorders, and characterise mutation
processes in mammalian genomes.
Matthew's email, profile and project
Paul Kellam - Virus Genomics
Paul's laboratory investigates virus genetic variation and virus-host cell interactions. He is a Professor of Viral
Pathogenesis at University College London.
Paul's email, profile and project
Dominic Kwiatkowski - Malaria programme
Dominic leads the Sanger Institute Malaria Programme, which uses genomic and genetic approaches to discover molecular
mechanisms of host-parasite interactions.
Dominic's email, profile and project
Trevor Lawley - Bacterial pathogenesis
Trevor studies the molecular mechanisms of persistent bacterial infections and the relationship between carriage,
disease and host-to-host transmission.
Trevor's email, profile and project
Pentao Liu - Mouse Cancer genetics
Pentao's laboratory studies cancer and mouse development. He uses a range of genetic, genomic and biochemical
approaches in the lab and develops novel technologies to facilitate the lab's studies.
Pentao's email, profile and project
Darren Logan - Genetics of instinctive behaviour
Darren's team studies genes that mediate social signals in the mouse, to decode the genetic basis of innate behaviour
in mammals.
Darren's email, profile and project
Ultan McDermott - Cancer genome project
Ultan's goal is to integrate genomic and drug sensitivity datasets from human cancer cell line models in order to
identify biomarkers to use in clinical trials.
Ultan's email, profile and project pages.
Ville Mustonen - Population genomics of molecular phenotypes
Ville develops population genetic methods for integrated sequencing and functional data to help explain natural
variation.
Ville's email, profile and project pages.
Julian Parkhill - Pathogen genomics
Julian uses high-throughput sequencing and phenotyping to study pathogen diversity and variation, how they affect
virulence and transmission, and what they tell us about the evolution of pathogenicity and host interactions.
Julian's email, profile and project
Julian Rayner - Malaria programme
Julian's lab investigates the molecular details of human-parasite interactions during the P. falciparum blood
stages, with a particular focus on genomic and proteomic approaches to understanding erythrocyte invasion and how
that process is influenced by natural genetic variation in both host and parasite.
Julian's email, profile and project
Manj Sandhu - Genetic Epidemiology
Manj's research explores genomic diversity and its impact on infectious and cardiometabolic risk factors among
populations.
Manj's email, profile and project
Bill Skarnes - Mouse developmental genetics
Bill is project leader of the EU and National Institutes of Health (NIH) high-throughput gene knockout programmes and
is exploiting embryonic stem cell technologies to study cell fate decisions in the early mouse embryo.
Bill's email, profile and project
Nicole Soranzo - Genomics of quantitative variation
Nicole's team works to expand discovery of novel genetic loci for intermediate cardiovascular endpoints through
associations of common and rare DNA variation with biochemical and physiologic intermediate phenotypes.
Nicole's email, profile and project
Derek Stemple - Vertebrate development and genetics
Derek is Head of Mouse and Zebrafish Genetics. Derek's team works on a range of projects related to growth and
development and human disease, using the model organisms X. tropicalis and the zebrafish.
Derek's email, profile and project
Michael Stratton - Cancer genome project
Mike Stratton is Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, where he initiated the Cancer Genome Project, which
conducts systematic genome-wide searches for somatic mutations in human cancer.
Michael's email, profile and project
Sarah Teichmann - Gene expression genomics
Sarah's group uses genomic approaches to study global regulation of gene expression in the mouse immune system.
Sarah's email, profile and project
Chris Tyler-Smith - Human evolution
Chris investigates the genetic variation in human populations and the insights this provides into human
evolution.
Chris' email, profile and project
Ludovic Vallier - Pancreatic genetics
Ludovic's group identifies RNA signalling and regulation networks and the genetic variants that control pancreas
development to explore their involvement in metabolic disorders.
Ludovic's email and profile and project
George Vassiliou - Haematological cancer genetics
George's research seeks to understand the genetic pathways involved in the pathogenesis of haematological cancers and
help develop targeted anti-leukaemic therapies.
George's email and profile and project
Gavin Wright - Cell surface signalling laboratory
Gavin's research focuses on taking large-scale systematic approaches to identify novel receptor-ligand pairs that
initiate intercellular signalling.
Gavin's email, profile and project
Vijay Yadav - Systems biology of bone
Vijay's laboratory uses mouse genetic, genomic, and proteomic approaches to investigate how molecules originating
from within, and outside the bone regulate bone remodelling.
Vijay's email, profile and project
Associate Faculty
Associate Faculty members spend part of their time at the Institute, bringing complementary insights and expertise of
new areas of research to the knowledge and resources of the Sanger Institute and thus broaden our portfolio of
scientific inquiry.
Adrian Bird - Epigenetic mechanisms in health and disease
Adrian's group studies the way chemical marking of chromosomes affects the activity of the genome in normal and
diseased cells.
Adrian's email, profile and project
Ewan Birney - Using outbred genetic variation to understand basic biology
Ewan's group is using genomic data to study changes in skeleton shape and form, the development of heart problems,
and basic biological processes in human in whole organisms and individual cells.
Ewan's email, profile and project
Steve Jackson - Maintenance of genome stability
Steve's group focuses on understanding how cells detect and repair DNA damage.
Steve's email, profile and project
Duncan Odom - Regulatory evolution in mammalian tissues
Duncan Odom's research group compares how transcription and transcriptional regulation vary during evolution, and the
implications this regulatory plasticity has for diseases such as cancer.
Duncan's home institute email,
Sanger Institute email, profile and project
Chris Ponting - Computational genome biology
Chris' group analyses next-generation sequencing data to better understand basic biological and disease
processes.
Chris' email, profile and project
Fiona Powrie
Fiona will work with the Institute towards further understanding of intestinal microbiota host interactions and of
how these influence infectious and chronic inflammatory diseases.
Fiona's email
Stephen O'Rahilly
Stephen will be working with the Institute towards further understanding the molecular mechanisms in metabolic
disease.
Stephen's email
Wolf Reik - Epigenetic reprogramming
Wolf's team investigates the way additional information can be added to DNA sequence in the genome through a process
called epigenetics.
Wolf's email, profile and project
Toni Vidal-Puig
Toni will be working with the Institute using mouse models to understand genes that affect energy balance and
mechanisms responsible for the secondary complications of obesity.
Toni's email
Thierry Voet - Single-cell genomics
Thierry's group focuses on developing methods that characterise the DNA and RNA in a single cell to enable the
exploration of DNA-mutation, the genetic differences between cells in a person's body and the relation of this
diversity to disease.
Thierry's email, profile and project
International Fellow
Honorary Faculty
The Sanger Institute has an Honorary Faculty of researchers from other research centres. Our Honorary Faculty collaborate closely with teams at the Sanger Institute to answer a range of research questions.
Previous Faculty
Previous members of our Faculty have developed their research in other centres around the globe. Access information and email addresses for previous Faculty.
