Dr. Edward Holmes is a renowned biologist affiliated with the University of Sydney who collaborated with the Chinese scientist, Dr. Yong-Zhen Zhang, and published the genome sequence of the SARS-CoV2 at the beginning of the pandemic on January 10th, 2020. He had a long history of researching viruses in China, tracing back to October 2014 when he was invited to study viruses in China by Dr. Zhang.
In partnership with the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Holmes and Dr. Zhang focused on finding spillover viruses from the Huanan market. Once they heard about the new coronavirus that emerged from the Wuhan market in January, they used the same techniques to sequence SARS-CoV2. Initially, Dr. Holmes was puzzled to see bits of genetic material that appeared to be engineered, however, after analyzing a coronavirus from a pangolin, suspicions were laid to rest. Dr. Holmes was more confident that this was a case of animal spillover.
Read more about Dr. Holmes’ path to coronavirus search here