Rate My Professor Alistair Forrest

Professor Alistair Forrest is a Winthrop Professor and Senior Principal Research Fellow in the UWA Medical School at the University of Western Australia. He heads the Systems Biology and Genomics Laboratory and serves as Associate Director (Scientific Strategy) at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth, Western Australia. Born in Western Australia, he earned a BSc (Hons) in Biotechnology from Murdoch University in 1993, a Masters in Information Technology from Queensland University of Technology, and a PhD in Bioinformatics from the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland. Early in his career, Forrest worked as a research assistant at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, contributing to some of Australia's first microarray analyses and inventing a strand-specific RNA-sequencing protocol that advanced the field.

In 2007, he relocated to RIKEN in Yokohama, Japan, on a CJ Martin Fellowship, rising to senior positions and coordinating the FANTOM5 project, an international consortium of over 250 scientists from 20 countries that produced comprehensive maps of mammalian promoters and enhancers using single-molecule sequencing. This effort yielded landmark publications, including 'A promoter level expression atlas' (Nature, 2014), 'An atlas of active enhancers across human cell types and tissues' (Nature, 2014), and 'An atlas of human long non-coding RNAs with accurate 5′ ends' (Nature, 2017). Returning to Perth in 2015 with support from the Cancer Research Trust Senior Cancer Research Fellowship, Forrest now applies next-generation sequencing, bioinformatics, and systems biology to investigate transcriptional regulatory networks, non-coding RNA biology, pan-cancer biomarkers, mesothelioma, and tissue-specific drug targets. His contributions have earned him Fellowship in the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (2020), the Eureka Prize for Excellence in International Scientific Collaboration (2016), the Lorne Genome Millennium Science Award (2016), and a Letter of Appreciation from the RIKEN President (2017).