Professor McVean's research focuses on understanding the molecular and evolutionary processes that shape genetic variation in populations and the relationship between genetic variation and phenotype. He played leading roles in international collaborations to characterise genomic variation, such as the 1000 Genomes Project, helped uncover remarkable processes that drive recombination and mutation in humans, and worked with multidisciplinary teams to discover and characteristic the mechanisms behind genetic drivers of risk to complex disease. He was the founding director of Oxford’s Big Data Institute, is co-founder of the Oxford spinout company, Genomics, and is President of the UK’s Genetics Society.

At EIT, Gil's focus is within the Pathogen Program, developing the data resources, genomic technologies, and analytical capabilities that support rapid diagnosis and treatment selection for infectious disease and enable global monitoring of current and emerging human pathogens. These challenges unite many of his long-standing research themes, including the building of population-scale genomic data resources, reference-guided genome assembly and interpretation, genealogical inference in recombining genomes, and mapping the relationship between genotype and phenotype for interpretation and prediction.