Andrew Rambaut

Andrew Rambaut FRS FRSE is a British evolutionary biologist, as of 2020 professor of molecular evolution at the University of Edinburgh.[1][3]

Andrew Rambaut

FRS FRSE
Alma materUniversity of Edinburgh (BSc)
University of Oxford (DPhil)
AwardsRoyal Society University Research Fellowship
Scientific career
FieldsMolecular evolution
Virology
Molecular epidemiology
Computational biology[1]
InstitutionsUniversity of Edinburgh
ThesisThe inference of evolutionary and population dynamic processes from molecular phylogenies (1997)
Doctoral advisorPaul H. Harvey[2]
Websitetree.bio.ed.ac.uk/people/arambaut/

Education

Rambaut earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the University of Edinburgh in 1993 followed by a DPhil in Zoology from the University of Oxford in 1997 supervised by Paul H. Harvey.[2][4][5]

Career and research

He was based at Oxford until 2006, when he took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship position and became Chair of Molecular Evolution at Edinburgh in 2010.[6]

Rambaut's research is primarily on the "evolutionary and epidemiological study of viral pathogens of humans and animals".[6]

In 2007, he published a paper with Alexei Drummond describing BEAST (Bayesian evolutionary analysis sampling trees), a software package for evolutionary analysis by molecular sequence variation, which uses Bayesian inference techniques.[7][8] This is freely available on GitHub.[9] A year later, Rambaut set up Virological.org, an online "discussion forum for molecular evolution and epidemiology of viruses".[10]

Rambaut has used genome sequencing to track the spread of monkeypox. His research suggests that cases outside Africa are all related and that the virus responsible may have been circulating in people since 2017.[11]

COVID-19

Science reported on 11 January 2020 that Rambaut was the first to publish the genome of the COVID-19 coronavirus after it was sent to him by Edward C. Holmes.[12][13] Holmes has said that it "took 52 minutes from receiving the code [from his Chinese colleague Professor Yong-Zhen Zhang] to publishing" on Virological.[14][15] The BBC Horizon episode The Vaccine stated: "When Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of a mystery new virus on January 10th 2020, vaccine scientists around the world immediately sprang into action."[16]

Rambaut was one of the authors of the scientific paper The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,[17] which concluded that "SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus". The paper led to scientific and political allegations in 2013, when Republican politicians in the US made accusations that the paper was a cover-up to eliminate the lab leak theory. The paper and the controversy became known as the Proximal Origin.[18][19]

Awards and honours

Rambaut was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2022,[20] having been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) since 2014.

Rambaut is an attendee of the UK government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).[21]

References
  1. Andrew Rambaut publications indexed by Google Scholar
  2. "Paul Harvey: Evolution tree". academictree.org.
  3. Andrew Rambaut publications from Europe PubMed Central
  4. "Andrew Rambaut". ed.ac.uk.
  5. Rambaut, Andrew (1997). The inference of evolutionary and population dynamic processes from molecular phylogenies. ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 556744675. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.339299.
  6. "Professor Andrew Rambaut FRSE". Royal Society of Edinburgh. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  7. Alexei J. Drummond; Andrew Rambaut (8 November 2007). "BEAST: Bayesian evolutionary analysis by sampling trees". BMC Ecology and Evolution. 7 (1): 214. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-7-214. ISSN 1471-2148. PMC 2247476. PMID 17996036. Wikidata Q27860723.
  8. "BEAST: Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis Sampling Trees". BEAST Software. 13 October 2020. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
  9. "beast-dev/beast-mcmc". GitHub. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
  10. Virological.org on the Wayback Machine, 2 April 2016
  11. Le Page, Michael (6 June 2022). "Monkeypox DNA hints virus has been spreading in people for years". New Scientist. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
  12. “Novel 2019 coronavirus genome”, 10 January 2020. https://virological.org/t/novel-2019-coronavirus-genome/319
  13. Cohen, Jon (2020). "Chinese researchers reveal draft genome of virus implicated in Wuhan pneumonia outbreak". Science.
  14. Kate Aubusson (2020) "Virus rebel Professor Edward Holmes named NSW Scientist of the Year", 26 October 2020, Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/virus-rebel-professor-edward-holmes-named-nsw-scientist-of-the-year-20201026-p568qj.html
  15. David Quammen (2020) "The Sobbing Pangolin", 31 August 2020, New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/did-pangolins-start-the-coronavirus-pandemic
  16. Horizon Special: The Vaccine, 10 June 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09kw2jz
  17. Kristian G Andersen; Andrew Rambaut; W Ian Lipkin; Edward C. Holmes; Robert F Garry (1 April 2020). "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2". Nature Medicine. 26 (4): 450–452. doi:10.1038/S41591-020-0820-9. ISSN 1078-8956. PMC 7095063. PMID 32284615. Wikidata Q87830056.
  18. Stolberg, Sheryl Gay; Mueller, Benjamin (11 July 2023). "Scientists, Under Fire From Republicans, Defend Fauci and Covid Origins Study". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
  19. Jon, Cohen (11 July 2023). "Politicians, scientists spar over alleged NIH cover-up using COVID-19 origin paper". Science. doi:10.1126/science.adj7036.
  20. Anon (2022). "Professor Andrew Rambaut FRS". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society.
  21. Sample, Ian (24 April 2020). "Who's who on secret scientific group advising UK government?". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 April 2020.


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