Theo Sanderson

Theo Sanderson

Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow

Francis Crick Institute

Biography

I am a researcher based at the Francis Crick Institute, where I develop new approaches for studying pathogen genomes at scale, both in the laboratory and computationally. I received my PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, where I worked on some of the first genome-scale screens in malaria parasites. After an AI Residency with Google in Boston, applying machine learning to amino acid sequences, I took up a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship to work at the Francis Crick Institute, where I have focused on increasing the scale of analyses possible in pathogen genetics.

Interests
  • Pathogen Genetics
  • Open Source Hardware
  • Machine Learning
Education
  • PhD in Malaria Genetics, 2016

    Wellcome Sanger Institute

  • BA Natural Sciences, 2011

    University of Cambridge

Recent Publications

This section tends to get out of date: more recent publications can be found on Google Scholar.
(2023). Independent SARS-CoV-2 staff testing protected academic and health-care institutions in northwest London. In The Lancet.
(2023). Regulators of male and female sexual development critical for transmission of a malaria parasite. Cell Host & Microbe.
(2022). Treenome Browser: co-visualization of enormous phylogenies and millions of genomes. Bioinformatics.
(2022). Determinants of Spike infectivity, processing, and neutralization in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants BA. 1 and BA. 2. Cell Host & Microbe.
(2022). The origins and molecular evolution of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B. 1.1. 7 in the UK. Virus Evolution.

Recent Posts

Positions held

 
 
 
 
 
Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow
Francis Crick Institute
Jun 2019 – Present London
Developing open-source tooling for high-thoughput pathogen genetics, including: PlasmoTron, CovInce, Chronumental and Taxonium.
 
 
 
 
 
AI Resident
Google
Jun 2018 – Jun 2019 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Developed deep-learning approaches for protein function prediction

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