Biography:

Prof Loftus completed a PhD in the molecular biology of Prion disease in UCD in 1996. He then went on to work as a post-doc in the former institute for genomics research (TIGR) now the J. Craig Venter Institute on the human genome project. He then went on to work in the Bioinformatics department as an analyst on a variety of bacterial genome projects and HMM based protein classification projects.

He then joined the faculty leading the sequencing and publication of both the amoebal pathogen Entamoeba histolytica and the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans in Nature and Science respectively. He has also worked on genome projects for both the malaria and dengue virus vectors Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti published in both Science. Overall, publications involving Prof Loftus have been cited over 3500 times and have received widespread media attention.

In 2007 Prof Loftus returned to Ireland after receiving an SFI research professorship in comparative genomics based on the host response. The proposal utilizes an amoeboid environmental host acanthamoeba castellanii to look at the contributions of environmental hosts on the evolution of virulence in intracellular pathogens with a focus on Legionella pneumophila.

Prof Loftus is also a PI on an Science foundation Ireland (SFI) funded research cluster in reproductive biology which has been funded for 5 years.

Prof Loftus has set up a sequencing laboratory in the Conway Institute based on 2 Illumina genome analyzers received as part of an SFI equipment grant which works on a variety of projects from human to microbial to ancient samples.

Prof Loftus is interested in Genomics and the analysis of genomes as well as host-pathogen interactions.