Tim Hearn

I’m Dr Tim Hearn—a comparative chronobiologist who has crossed kingdoms and organ systems to understand how our body clocks govern health and disease. I began my academic career at the University Birmingham, where my curiosity about biological time earned me both the Farmer Prize and the Society of Biology Prize for top degree performance. A BBSRC- iCASE-funded PhD with Prof Alex Webb at Cambridge followed, dissecting how plants keep time and winning the 2016 HE Woodman Prize for best plant-science thesis. 

That fascination with circadian rhythms has since taken me from plants to zebrafish with Prof David Whitmore and, today, to people. I now lead Chronomic Medicine in Cambridge’s Department of Genomic Medicine, mining Genomics England’s National Genomic Research Library to ask a simple question with big clinical implications: how does the daily (and seasonal) rhythm of our genes shape rare diseases and cancer? 

Current projects range from clock-gene variants that influence survival in Lynch-linked colorectal and endometrial cancers, to the mysterious dawn-and-dusk peaks of inherited arrhythmias like Long QT Syndrome. My team also explores seasonal fingerprints in rheumatoid arthritis, chronopharmacogenomics (matching drug timing to your genome), and how “super-panels” can close diagnostic gaps across ethnicities. Together, these studies aim to turn time itself into a therapeutic—getting the right diagnosis and the right treatment at the right moment. 

I also have the pleasure of teaching at Newnham College—Cambridge’s historic women’s college—where I serve as College Lecturer in Natural Sciences (Biological) and Director of Studies for Part II & III Biological Sciences. Although the fellowship is all-women, men can be lecturers and attend Governing Body, and I’m proud to ally myself with the College’s mission. Ask me about Newnham’s trail-blazing role in the early history of genetics and I’ll happily talk for hours! 

I am honoured to serve as one of our School Equality Champions: I chair the Equality Champions Network and lead undergraduate widening-participation initiatives, working to ensure that opportunity in genomics and biomedical science is open to every background. 

Beyond the lab, I’m an award-nominated educator on the Cambridge Genomic Medicine Programme, where I teach clinicians and scientists to tame next-generation sequencing data. I hold Fellowships of the Royal Society of Biology, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Higher Education Academy, and I stay grounded by translating complex genomics into plain language for patients and the public by writing for the Conversation. 

Whether you’re a fellow researcher, a clinician looking for collaborations, or a patient curious about why your symptoms in the mornings feel different from nights, I’d love to connect. You can find my publications and talks via my lab profile or drop me a line on LinkedIn.  

Project/study information

I lead the Chronomic Medicine group: decoding how daily and seasonal body-clock rhythms shape cancer and rare disease, including cardiac arrhythmias and epilepsies. Data mining the National Genomic Research Library for clock-gene variants, we target fairer diagnosis and right-time therapies.