Professor Edwards gained an Honours degree in Agricultural Science from the University of Nottingham and a PhD from the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge. He has held positions within academia, government and industry in the UK, Canada and Australia. In 2015 he moved to the University of Western Australia as Professor in Plant Genomics and in 2022 established the Centre for Applied Bioinformatics, supporting the continued growth of Bioinformatics across agricultural, environmental and biomedical disciplines. He is one of Australia’s leading bioinformatics researchers, recognised as a Highly Cited researcher by Clarivate each year since 2019. His research interests include the structure and expression of plant genomes, the discovery and application of genome variation and the use of artificial intelligence to understand traits, with a focus on crop plants and accelerating crop improvement in the face of climate change.