Ewan Birney is the Interim Executive Director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). Together with Peer Bork, who is the Interim Director General of EMBL, Ewan leads EMBL’s activities, continuing to deliver on the vision and priorities set out in the ‘Molecules to Ecosystems’ programme.

Ewan also runs a small research group working on intraspecies variation in medaka fish and humans.

Ewan completed his PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute with Richard Durbin. In 2000, he became Head of Nucleotide data at EMBL-EBI and in 2012 he took on the role of Associate Director at the institute. He was Director of EMBL-EBI between 2015 and 2025. In 2020, Ewan also became the Deputy Director General of EMBL, and in 2025, he was named Executive Director of EMBL.