David received his BSc from the University of Hull, where he attained first class honours and the Professor Murton Prize for outstanding achievement in Zoology. David continued his studies at the University of Hull, undertaking a university funded MSc by Research under the supervision of Dr Africa Gómez. This investigation utilised bioinformatic methods to characterise the genomic architecture of sex chromosomes in Triops cancriformis across differing sexual systems.

David is a final year PhD candidate in our group, and is jointly supervised by Dr Simon Goodman (University of Leeds) and Dr. Mary O’Connell. He obtained a highly competitive PhD scholarship from the Leeds York NERC Doctoral Training Partnership. During his PhD, David used long-read next generation sequencing technology and cutting edge bioinformatic methods to assemble the genome of the Caspian seal. This genomic data will be incorporated with other publicly available genomes in a large scale comparative genomic analysis, investigating selection variation across Pinniped species (seals, fur seals, sea lions and walrus). This investigation will aim to identify some of the molecular adaptations underpinning the diverse lactation strategies seen across different species of pinnipeds.