Richard Orton
Bioinformatician
Scotland, United Kingdom
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRichard Orton is a bioinformatician with over a decade of experience applying high-throughput and nanopore sequencing to viral evolution, transmission dynamics, and metagenomic discovery. Based at the University of Glasgow's Centre for Virus Research, he has played a central role in the genomic response to SARS-CoV-2 through COG-UK and develops computational tools for viral classification used by the ICTV, where he serves as Technical Editor for the Virus Taxonomy report. His work spans practical field studies—from vampire bats in Peru to UK pollinators and ticks—to statistical models that distinguish true viral variants from sequencing errors and predict viral reservoir hosts (published in Science). He also combines software engineering and epidemiological modelling from earlier careers in disease spread simulation and financial systems, giving him rare breadth across computational, laboratory and policy-facing virology.
11 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
PhD, Bioinformatics, PhD, Bioinformatics at The University of EdinburghBSc, Biochemistry with Biotechnology, BSc, Biochemistry with Biotechnology at The University of Birmingham
Github Skills (11)
bioinformatics8
sequencing5
journal4
creative-commons3
open-access3
statistics3
command-line-tool3
java3
parsing3
academia2
virus1
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
rjorton/VSensus
Mar 2016 - Aug 2022
Contributions:2 pushes, 1 branch in 6 years 6 months
rjorton/OrtonLinks
Nov 2019 - Jan 2025
Contributions:53 pushes, 1 branch in 5 years 3 months
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