Professor Forrest BSc(Hons), MIT, PhD was born in Western Australia. On completing his Honours, he worked as a research assistant at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (now known as the QIMR Berghofer). He also completed a Masters in Information Technology and a PhD in Bioinformatics at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland. He has been involved in both ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ science, generating and analysing some of the first microarrays used in Australia and invented a strand specific RNA-sequence protocol that heralded the start of the RNA-sequence revolution.

 In 2007 he moved to RIKEN Yokohama Japan on a CJ Martin Fellowship. He is currently scientific coordinator of the FANTOM5 (Functional Annotation of the mammalian genome) project consisting of a consortium of over 250 scientists in 20 countries. This has used single-molecule sequencing to generate a map of promoters and enhancers across a large collection of human and mouse primary cells, cancer cell lines and tissues. This work has recently published in the prestigious journal Nature along with a collection of 18 additional satellite papers in specialized journals such as Nature Biotechnology, Genome Research and Blood.

Professor Forrest is currently the Laboratory Head - Systems Biology and Genomics at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth, Western Australia, and a recipient of a Cancer Research Trust Senior Cancer Research Fellowship.