Ian Tomlinson is incoming Director of the Edinburgh Cancer Centre, and Charles and Ethel Barr Chair of Cancer Research. He was previously Director of the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham, having worked before that at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, University of Oxford and the Institute of Cancer Research. His research interests lie in discovering and functionally characterising cancer driver genes, especially germline variants that predispose to cancer. He also has a longstanding interest in cancer evolution, derived from his PhD project in population genetics, with a specific interest in the relative contributions of selection and mutation to cancer growth. Ian's work focuses on colorectal cancer, but extends to several other cancer types. He is especially keen to integrate work across a variety of biomedical areas, including human patient cohorts and clinics, animals models of disease and biomathematics.