Richard A. Neher


Richard A. Neher is a German biophysicist and Professor of Computational Modeling of Biological Processes at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland.
WWW neherlab.org𝕏 richardneher

Life and career

Richard Neher was born in Göttingen, West Germany. He studied physics at the universities of Göttingen and Munich between 1998 and 2003. He earned his PhD in 2007 with a thesis on the dynamic aspects of DNA replication. Following his doctoral studies, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and later led a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen, Germany. In 2017, he joined the Biozentrum of the University of Basel as an Associate Professor for Computational Modeling of Biological Processes, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2025.
Richard Neher is the eldest son of Nobel Prize winner Erwin Neher and his wife Eva-Maria Neher.

Research

Neher's work focuses on the evolution of viruses and bacteria. His research group develops software and algorithms to track the spreading of these organisms and to analyze their genetic changes. He co-founded Nextstrain, an open-source platform for real-time tracking of viral pathogens, and has developed methods for predicting influenza virus evolution. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was a member of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force, advising the federal government.
In addition to SARS-CoV-2, Neher also studies the evolution of human viruses such as HIV, influenza, and RSV. Another focus of his work is on the dynamics of bacterial "accessory genomes" acquired through horizontal gene transfer, which can contribute to environmental adaptation and antibiotic resistance.

Awards and honors