Emma Thomson is clinical professor of infectious diseases at the MRC-University of Virus Research and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She trained in Glasgow, London, and Oxford and now runs a laboratory that uses next generation sequencing approaches to diagnose and understand emerging viral infections in the UK and Uganda. She has worked as a consultant for WHO and is a member of the UK Variant Technical Group, the COG-UK consortium, the G2P consortium and the Scottish Standing Committee for Pandemic Preparedness.