David Bentley, DPhil FMedSci, Vice President and Chief Scientist at Illumina Inc.

David graduated with an M.A. in Natural Sciences from Cambridge and a D.Phil. from Oxford. During his career he has been a Senior Lecturer at London University; and later the Head of Human Genetics and a founder member of the Board of Management at the Sanger Center.

David has played a leading role in the Human Genome Project and related international consortia to characterize human sequence variation, including the SNP Consortium and the HapMap Project. His long-term interest is the study of human sequence variation and its impact on human health and disease. His current research is focused on fast, accurate sequencing of human genomes for adoption in healthcare, with early applications including rare genetic disease and cancer. These applications are exemplified by the completion of the 100,000 genomes project, a partnership between Illumina, Genomics England and the National Health Service (NHS) in England.

Most recently David has focused research efforts on supporting development of sequencing approaches for SARS-CoV-2 genomes and the host genomes of infected patients in partnership with Genomics England and the NHS.​