Brendan Larder, PhD Dr Larder obtained a Ph.D in Virology at Cambridge University. His research career has focussed on HIV therapeutics, drug resistance & molecular diagnostics for over 40 years in academic research & the pharmaceutical industry. In 1986 at Wellcome, he worked on the mode of action of anti-HIV drugs such as AZT and the potential for drug resistance. His achievements include the first identification of HIV drug resistance with the description of AZT resistance in 1989 and the subsequent discovery of the genetic basis of this resistance. From 1997, he pioneered the development of HIV phenotyping and genotyping assay technologies at Virco. This work included the development of the ‘virtual phenotype’. In 2001 Brendan joined Visible Genetics as the Chief Scientific Officer, where he was responsible for all R&D activities in the areas of HIV, HBV, HCV and oncology molecular diagnostics. He then became Chair of the HIV Resistance Response Database Initiative (RDI) in January 2003. This is a not-for-profit initiative that uses artificial intelligence technology to predict a patients’ response to anti-HIV drug combination. He has numerous, seminal scientific papers that have been cited over 20,000 times.