Colum is the current director for the Clinical Genomics platform, which over the last 10 years has been instrumental in facilitating the translation of advanced genomic techniques into clinical practice. With units at each university hospital, the platform has a truly national reach as well as clinical proximity. The platform provides end-to-end support for both clinical and preclinical projects and helps pioneer the implementation of new approaches to addressing unmet medical needs.
In his own research, he has focused largely on looking at the interaction between genes and environment and how additional, epigenetic information, which is added to our DNA in a semi-stable fashion during the course of our lives, can inform our understanding of human biology and disease. This has ranged from mechanistic work looking at the effects of altering epigenetic information, to epidemiological studies examining the traces left on our genes from our exposure to infections and other environmental interactions.