Dr Simon King

Simon is a postdoctoral scientist within the Non-Vesicular Disease Reference laboratory (NVRL). Alongside working to ISO/IEC17025 accreditation for the diagnosis of a range of diseases including bluetongue, African horse sickness and African swine fever, Simon’s focus centres around the sequencing of circulating orbiviruses and improvement of current diagnostic assays.

Simon obtained a BSc in Microbiology before studying for a PhD at the Institute of Infection and Global Health, University of Liverpool. His thesis focused on the genetic variation of hepatitis C virus, utilising both Sanger sequencing and next generation sequencing techniques to explore the prevalence of drug resistance mutations in treatment-naïve patients.

During his time at the Pirbright Institute, he has worked as a laboratory technician for both the UK Culicoides reference laboratory (Entomology group) and the NVRL. Subsequent to this initial role, he was responsible for obtaining full genome sequences of Rinderpest virus isolates kept at the Institute prior to their destruction (the Rinderpest Sequence & Destroy project) as part of the OIE-FAO post-eradication activities.