Richard Acton Joined the Babraham institute in 2022 as the data outputs manager for the Human Developmental Biology Initiative (HDBI). Richard received his MSci in Biochemistry and Genetics from the University of Nottingham and an MSc in Bioinformatics with systems biology from Birkbeck, University of London. He obtained his PhD in the Epigenomics of Human Ageing form the University of Southampton in the group of Dr. Chris Bell. His work focused on changes in DNA methylation at tRNA genes and throughout the Human life-course.

He then worked as both a Post-Doc in the Lab of Prof. Björn Schumacher attempting to model the impact of alternative histones on transcriptional elongation speed in C. elegans and as a computational biologist in the bioinformatics core facility at CECAD. In this later role he expanded on an existing interest in reproducible computational analysis and exploratory data visualisation in his work developing pipeline tools for other scientists at the institute.