Professor Andrew Rambaut is an evolutionary biologist whose research has focused on the evolution, epidemiology, and origins of RNA viruses. RNA viruses, which include HIV, influenza, Ebola, SARS-CoV-2, Zika, polio, and many other of the most challenging infectious diseases, are characterised by their unrivalled rate of evolution. His work harnesses this otherwise vexatious feature to reconstruct the history of transmission and spread recorded in their genomes through the accumulation of mutations.