Rate My Professor David Adams

Dr David Adams is Head of the Somatic Genomics Programme and Senior Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. He leads research deploying functional genomics, saturation genome editing and duplex sequencing to decode the mutational landscape driving cancer and other diseases, with a particular focus on dissecting driver versus passenger variants in skin cancer somatic genomes. His expertise spans high-throughput functional genetic screens, cancer genetics and computational biology, with emphasis on how somatic mutations drive tumour and disease development.

Adams joined the Wellcome Sanger Institute as a postdoc and progressed through roles including Cancer Research UK Career Development Fellow and Group Leader, Cancer Research UK Senior Fellow and Senior Group Leader, before becoming Interim Head of the Somatic Genomics Programme. He holds a PhD and a D.Sc from the University of Sydney, Faculty of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of Pathologists and recipient of the Goudie Medal and Lecture from the Pathological Society. Adams co-founded the Atlas of Variant Effects Alliance and co-leads the Sanger Excellence Fellowships for Black British postdoctoral scientists. His research includes the Dermatlas project on skin cancer genomics across diverse ancestries and efforts to expand cancer genomic studies in underrepresented populations, particularly in Latin America. He has mentored more than 50 researchers and supervised over a dozen PhD students.