Desmond Gerard Higgins is a Professor of Bioinformatics at University College Dublin,[3][12][13][14] widely known for CLUSTAL,[15] a series of computer programs for performing multiple sequence alignment.

[16][17][18] Higgins was educated at Trinity College, Dublin[19] where he was awarded a PhD in 1988 for research on numerical taxonomy of Pterygote insects.

[20] Research in the Higgins laboratory[3] focuses on developing new bioinformatics and statistical tools for evolutionary biology.

[12][19] Higgins was elected a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) in 2015.

[21] In 2018, Higgins received the Benjamin Franklin Award for open access in the life sciences.