Edward Holmes Australian Society for Microbiology Annual Scientific Meeting 2021

Edward Holmes

Edward (Eddie) Holmes is an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, Eddie was the Verne M. Willaman Chair in the Life Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. Eddie received his undergraduate degree from the University of London (1986) and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (1990). Following that, he performed postdoctoral research at the Universities of California (Davis), Edinburgh and Oxford. Between 1993-2004 he held various positions at the University of Oxford, including University Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology and Fellow of New College. His research focuses on the emergence, evolution and spread of RNA viruses, with special emphasis on revealing the genetic and epidemiological processes that underpin viral emergence, the molecular epidemiology of important human and animal pathogens, understanding the nature of global virus diversity, and the major mechanisms of virus evolution. He played a key role in the initial discovery of SARS-CoV-2 (the causative agent of COVID-19) and was the first person globally to release the genome sequence of virus. In 2003 he was awarded the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London. In 2008 he became a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) in 2015 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017. He has published over 630 peer-reviewed papers that have been cited more than 90,000 times (h-index = 145).