Dan obtained a BSc(hons) in Biological Sciences at the University of Exeter in the UK before subsequently obtaining an MSc in Bioinformatics at the same institution. Following a year of travelling and internships in labs in Bermuda and Montana he undertook a PhD in Molecular Parasitology in the lab of Prof. Debbie Smith at the University of York, UK. He next joined the parasite genomics group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute where he worked on annotating Leishmania and Plasmodium transcriptomes. In 2011, he switched his focus to viruses and began a productive post-doctoral position in the lab of Prof. Judy Breuer where he specialized in combining novel sequencing methodologies with bespoke bioinformatics solutions for the capture, sequencing, and analysis of viral genomes and transcriptomes from clinical samples. In 2014, he was awarded a three-year Medical Research Foundation New Investigator Award which allowed him to pursue his own research interests. In collaboration with Werner Ouwendijk (Erasmus MC) and Tomohiko Sadaoko (Kobe University), they discovered the VZV latency transcript, a critical discovery that finally resolved a long standing mystery. Dan moved to New York in 2017 and joined the lab of Prof Ian Mohr at the NYU School of Medicine. Here, he collaborated with Ian Mohr and Angus Wilson to pioneer the use of nanopore direct RNA-Sequencing to profile viral transcriptomes and detect RNA modifications. This led to numerous productive collaborations and successful projects. In 2018, he became a Research Assistant Professor and combined research with teaching sequencing bioinformatics on the NYU Biomedical Data Science program. In 2021, he joined the Hannover Medical School in Germany as an Associate W2 Professor of Systems Virology, funded via the German Centre for Infection Research. Here, he has established a diverse research program that works at the interface of molecular virology and computational biology. During his free time, and when his knees permit, Dan enjoys playing sports and has long standing interests in music, film, and writing. His full conflicts of interest are available here. [TODO add Links]
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