Rate My Professor Paul Gardner

Gardner's research encompasses three primary strands: RNA biology, with emphasis on the functional characterization of non-coding RNAs and the effects of promiscuous RNA:RNA interactions on translation; analysis of genome variation, identifying functionally significant convergent evolutionary signals through high-density transposon mutagenesis and comparative genomics; and the benchmarking, evaluation, and improvement of bioinformatic tools using methods such as curation of positive and negative control datasets, meta-analysis, and meta-science approaches. Key publications include 'Pervasive transcription in the human genome exceeds background noise' in Genome Biology & Evolution (2026, with Adey et al.), 'Towards a phylogenetically informed approach to solving protein-protein interactions' in Biochemical Society Transactions (2025, with Lim et al.), 'Evaluating computational tools for protein-coding sequence detection: Are they up to the task?' in RNA (2025, with Champion et al.), and 'A bioinformatician, computer scientist, and geneticist lead bioinformatic tool development—which one is better?' in Bioinformatics Advances (2025). His contributions extend to expertise in bioinformatics benchmarks, software development, ncRNA, data curation, applied machine learning, data science, genetics variation, RNA, and non-coding RNA. Gardner's research is funded by the Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, MBIE Smart Ideas, the Marsden Fund, the Bio-Protection CoRE, and the Biomolecular Interaction Centre. He was promoted to associate professor at the University of Otago Department of Biochemistry in 2020.