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Dr Donald King is Head of the Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratory Group and leads the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) World Reference Laboratory for foot-and-mouth disease (WRLFMD). He has a background in veterinary virology and immunology (University of Leeds, University of California, Davis, USA), and has research interests in understanding the processes that drive the evolution of positive-stranded genome viruses such as foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV).

From a practical perspective, work within the group also develops and applies new technologies for the detection and characterisation of important livestock disease agents such as FMDV. These methods underpin the routine diagnostic work of the FMD Reference Laboratory at The Pirbright Institute and are also used to monitor the global patterns of disease, and to recognise new emerging viral lineages that pose threats to the UK and Europe.

Don is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Virological Methods and participates in European collaborative research projects that aim to develop new diagnostic tools (Rapidia-Field), and to use next-generation sequencing approaches for molecular epidemiology.