Dr. Donald P. King

Dr. Donald P. King is the Head of the Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratory Group and leads the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) World Reference Laboratory for foot and mouth disease (WRLFMD). He is the OIE expert for foot and mouth disease and swine vesicular. He has a background in veterinary virology and immunology (University of Leeds, University of California, Davis, USA), and his research interests involve understanding the processes that drive the evolution of positive-stranded genome viruses such as foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV). From a practical perspective, his work within the group also develops and applies new technologies for the detection and characterisation of important livestock disease agents, such as FMDV. These methods underpin the routine diagnostic work of the FMD Reference Laboratory at the Pirbright Institute and are also used to monitor the global patterns of disease and recognise new emerging viral lineages that pose threats to the UK and Europe. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Virological Methods and participates in European collaborative research projects that aim to develop new diagnostic tools (Rapidia-Field) and use next-generation sequencing approaches for molecular epidemiology. His main research areas include diagnostics, epidemiology, and virology.