David Stephen Horner gained his PhD in Biochemistry working on the Epstein-Barr Virus latency protein EBNA-1 in the group of Prof. Paul Farrell at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (St Mary's Hospital, London) in 1995. His interests subsequently moved towards genomics and molecular evolution during a period working on the early evolution of eukaryotes with Prof. Martin Embley at the Natural History Museum in London. In 2002 he moved to Italy with a EU Marie Curie fellowship to work with Prof. Graziano Pesole at the University of Milan, where he has specialized in comparative genomics, molecular evolution, and more recently on the development of software and algorithms for the analysis of high throughput sequencing data. He became an assistant professor in 2006 and an associate professor in 2015. Prof. Horner is author of nearly 60 papers in international peer reviewed journals and has an H-index of 28. He is an associate editor for BMC Genomics, is responsible for internationalization of the Dept. of Biosciences at the University of Milan and contributes widely to initiatives for the dissemination of science to the wider public.