Dr Donald King is Head of the Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratory Group and leads the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) World Reference Laboratory for foot-and-mouth disease (WRLFMD). He has a background in veterinary virology and immunology (University of Leeds, University of California, Davis, USA), and has research interests in understanding the processes that drive the evolution of positive-stranded genome viruses such as foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV).
Don is the OIE expert for foot-and-mouth disease and swine vesicular disease.