Professor Oliver Pybus

Professor of Evolution & Infectious Disease

Oliver Pybus is Professor of Evolution & Infectious Disease at the Department of Biology and a Professorial Fellow of New College, Oxford. He is a Lead Researcher of the Oxford Martin Programme on Pandemic Genomics and Chief Editor of the journal Virus Evolution.

His research aims to explain the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens, particularly viral infections of humans. He is fascinated by how evolutionary and ecological processes - which occur on the same timescale for many rapidly evolving infectious diseases - combine and interact in natural populations.

Professor Pybus studied genetics and computational biology, before coming to Oxford to complete his DPhil in evolutionary biology in the Department of Biology. He develops new computational techniques for tracking and predicting virus transmission from genomic data.