Dr Steve Fiddaman

Steve completed his PhD at the University of Oxford in 2021 under the supervision of Prof. Adrian Smith and Prof. Laurent Frantz (LMU, Munich). His thesis focused on immune adaptation in wild and domesticated birds, including penguins, swans and chickens, establishing methods to functionally validate genetic evidence of positive selection in immune genes. 

Remaining at Oxford for a three-year post-doc, Steve worked on the evolution of virulence in Marek’s Disease Virus, leveraging ancient DNA to elucidate the genetic underpinnings of virulence increases in the 20th century. 

He is a founding member of the Chicken Genomic Diversity Consortium, an international group using chicken genomics to answer diverse questions in chicken biology, including the adaptation of chickens to infectious disease.