Dr Tim Downing

Dr Tim Downing is Head of Genomics and works on a range of viral pathogens and associated host species. His role spans training and research in genomics applied to viruses, livestock, their vectors, and molecular interactions. He has experience in measuring genetic diversity, modelling evolution, and assessing population structure across a range of prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms.

By researching the origin, evolution and spread of infectious agents, his groups aims to probe how viral genomes adapt to and transmit between animals using advanced genomic and pangenomic methods. Tim has particular interests in developing better genomic methods to decipher virus evolution, and efficiently integrating multi-layered ‘omics data to decode the molecular mechanisms of host-virus interactions. 

Dr Downing has a background in genetics (Trinity College Dublin) and bioinformatics (Dublin City University), and did a PhD in the population genetics of chicken immune genes (Trinity College Dublin). He worked as a postdoc in Leishmania genomics on the Parasite Genomics team (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute), including the genome analysis, drug resistance evolution and population genetics of Leishmania donovani. During 2012 - 2014, Tim was a lecturer in bioinformatics (University of Galway) where he worked on applying genomics to understand bacterial variation and evolution. From 2015 - 2022, he was a lecturer in genomics (Dublin City University) where he continued research in parasite and bacterial population genomics. During his career, Tim completed a PGCert in Teaching & Learning (University of Galway), was previously chair of an undergraduate degree (Dublin City University) and is a fellow of Advance HE (FHEA).