Cornelius Roemer studied Physics at the University of Cambridge. Since 2021, he has been a Staff Scientist and Scientific Software Engineer at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, in Richard Neher's group working on virus evolution.  

He develops tools and resources for scientists and public health professionals working on pathogenic viruses, with contributions to Nextclade, CoV-Spectrum, and Nextstrain. 

Since 2023, Cornelius has been responsible for designating new Pango lineages, a classification system for SARS-CoV-2 variants, and has maintained the Mpox lineage system. He also contributed to papers describing and analyzing major Omicron lineages such as BA.4/5 and BA.2.86. 

Cornelius is a founding member of Pathoplexus and one of the tech-leads of Loculus, the software tool powering Pathoplexus.