Rate My Professor Matt Field

Professor Matt Field serves as Professor in Bioinformatics and Promotional Chair at James Cook University. He holds two Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and biology from the University of British Columbia and a PhD in medical science from the Australian National University titled "Computational Analysis of Genetic Variation," supervised by Chris Goodnow. His career includes roles as Assistant Bioinformatic Coordinator at the Genome Sciences Centre in Canada (2004-2010), leading bioinformatics teams in cancer research; Bioinformatics Software Development Team Leader at Biomatters (2010); Senior Bioinformatics Manager at the Australian National University (2010-2015), where he developed high-throughput variant detection pipelines analyzed over 4,000 exomes and 3,000 genomes for diseases like lupus, diabetes, and melanoma; and at James Cook University as Senior Bioinformatics Fellow (2016-2019), co-director of the Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology (2018-2024), Associate Professor (2020-2024), and current Professor. He holds adjunct positions at the Menzies School of Health Research and Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

An NHMRC Emerging Leader II Fellow and recipient of the Frank Fenner Early Career Fellowship for the highest-scoring early career researcher, Professor Field is Chief Investigator for the NHMRC Centre for Personalised Immunology and executive associate editor for Human Genomics (Springer Nature). He has been named investigator on grants exceeding $10 million, with over $2.5 million as sole chief investigator. His research focuses on bioinformatics pipelines for variant detection, genetic variation in human diseases particularly autoimmune disorders, immunogenomics, and personalised medicine. In the last five years, he published 50 peer-reviewed papers in high-impact journals such as Nature (three), Cell, Science Advances (two), and PNAS (two), cited over 6,000 times. Key publications include "A TNIP1-driven systemic autoimmune disorder with elevated IgG4" (2024), "Chromosomal inversions harbour excess mutational load in the coral, Acropora kenti, on the Great Barrier Reef" (2024), "The Australasian dingo archetype: de novo chromosome-length genome assembly, DNA methylome, and cranial morphology" (2023), and "Secreted and surface proteome and transcriptome of Opisthorchis felineus" (2023). His interdisciplinary lab advances health research through cutting-edge bioinformatics.