Regular biography
Professor Aris Katzourakis is a member of the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. His research interests include viral evolution, genome evolution, and mobile genetic element evolution. His work primarily focuses on the long-term evolutionary biology of viruses, utilizing genomic 'fossil records' of ancient viral sequences within host genomes. This has led to the development of paleovirology, which examines endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) and endogenous viral elements (EVEs). His research also encompasses present-day viral pathogen evolution and epidemiology, such as HIV/HTLV, and evolutionary inference from genomic data. He is an associate editor of BMC Evolutionary Biology and serves on the editorial board of Evolutionary Biology.