Lars Jermiin is Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Bioinformatics at School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences, University of Galway, and Honorary Professor at Research School of Biology, Australian National University. He holds an MSc (Population Genetics) from the University of Aarhus (1989) and a PhD (Molecular Evolution) from La Trobe University (1994). He did postdoctoral research at La Trobe University (1994-5), Université d'Ottawa (1995), the Australian National University (1995-8), and the University of Sydney (1998-2001). In 2001, he was appointed Lecturer at the University of Sydney and later promoted to Senior Lecturer (2004), and Associate Professor (2008). In 2002, he co-founded the Sydney University Bioinformatics & Technology Centre (SUBIT) and later became Director of SUBIT (2003-7). In 2009, the Australian Commonwealth Scientific Industrial & Research Organisation (CSIRO) appointed him as Science Leader, to establish and lead a research team focusing on genome bioinformatics at CSIRO's Division of Entomology. Later, he served as Senior Principle Research Leader at CSIRO's Division of Land & Water (2014-7). In 2016, he was appointed Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and later served as Visiting Professor at the University College Dublin (2018-22). In 2022, he was appointed Data Stewardship Manager at ELIXIR - Ireland, and in 2023 he was appointed Assistant Professor at University College Dublin's School of Biology & Environmental Sciences, before taking up his current position.

Lars Jermiin is an expert in evolutionary biology and bioinformatics, with particular strengths in molecular phylogenetics and comparative genomics. His interests spans the ways in which genes and proteins, populations, and species diverge and adapt to changing environments. He has applied his knowledge and methodologies in a variety of research areas, including genome annotation, evolution, biosecurity, and the engineering of novel enzymes. Much of his research focuses on developing methods to extract information from genomic data in a statistically sound and computationally efficient manner. His current focus is on promoting a new phylogenetic protocol (NAR Genomics & Bioinformatics 2, lqaa041) -- designed to mitigate model misspecification and confirmation bias -- and on developing methods and bioinformatics tools to support this protocol. Among these are methods and tools to: (i) detect violations of phylogenetic assumptions; (ii) identify optimal models of sequence evolution for data that evolved under clocklike conditions; (iii) obtain phylogenetic estimates from data that evolved under non-clocklike conditions; and (iv) assess whether phylogenetic estimates are affected by ascertainment bias. In addition, he is doing, or has done, applied research with multiple foci, including:

• Insect Genome Projects - He co-led the annotation and comparison of detoxification genes in the cotton bollworm and the corn earworm (BMC Biology 15, 63), the tobacco hornworm (Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 76, 118-147), and two species of bumblebee (Genome Biology 16, 76).
• Bat1K Genome Project - He co-led the phylogenetic research in this project (Nature 583, 578-584) and co-leads further phylogenetic research of these data.
• Plant Chloroplast Genomes - He leads phylogenetic research aimed at uncovering the complexity of evolutionary processes underpinning the diversity of chloroplast genomes. 1KITE Project -- He contributed to this project, with novel strategies and methods for analysing the phylogenomic data (Science 346, 763-767; Science 349, 487).
• Biosecurity - He contributed to research identifying the origins and incursion pathways of pests affecting agriculture and livestock (PLoS One 11, e0146699; Scientific Reports 7, 45302).
• Design of Novel Enzymes - He co-led the project aimed at engineering novel -transaminases for use in a biotechnological setting (Green Chemistry 19, 5375-5380; International Patent Application PCTAU2014000617).