Toby is a group leader and DDLS fellow at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. He has a broad range of interests spanning transposable elements (TEs), genomics from populations to entire kingdoms, and the development of tools to facilitate genomic research. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms that drive genome innovation and host adaptation across the tree of life, with a particular emphasis on the role of mobile DNA in shaping genome structure, adaptation, and biodiversity over deep evolutionary time. Toby’s major aims include leveraging emerging technologies, such as interpretable AI, to explore the diversity of mobile DNA across the tree of life, developing computational tools to analyze genomic data, and investigating the evolutionary dynamics of TEs in various organisms. Working in a museum also provides a unique opportunity to explore the evolutionary history of life on Earth through the lens of natural history collections, which he wants to leverage to inform his research on genome evolution and adaptation.
Outside the lab, Toby spends most of his time outdoors: climbing, trail running, cycling, skiing, wild swimming, or just wandering in the woods. He’s a firm believer in Type 2 fun as a healthy counterweight to life behind a screen. This inevitably comes with an ever-growing interest in outdoor gear and an unhealthy amount of time spent researching kit he probably doesn’t need (he’s also an advocate for the N+1 bikes rule…). The one indoor pursuit that competes: third-wave speciality coffee. He’ll happily make the case for a well-pulled espresso or slow pour-over to anyone within earshot.
Toby completed his PhD in evolutionary genetics at the University of Exeter 🇬🇧 with Dr. Alex Hayward, funded by the BBSRC SWBio Doctoral Training Partnership. Here, he developed Earl Grey to improve the user-friendliness of TE annotation. He also explored the evolutionary dynamics of TEs across the tree of life, with a particular focus on how they shape genome structure and adaptation in insects.
He then moved to the lab of Prof. Daniel Croll at the University of Neuchâtel 🇨🇭. Here, his focus shifted to fungal plant pathogens: how TEs evolve over short timescales, and their role in rapid adaptation to diverse environments. During this time, he developed the MycoMobilome database, a comprehensive resource for studying TEs across the fungal kingdom. This is also where ParTEA was first conceived, extending Earl Grey to enable comparative TE analysis across multiple genomes.