James O. McInerney is an Irish-born microbiologist, computational evolutionary biologist, professor, and former head of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology and elected Fellow of the Linnean Society. In June 2020 he was elected president-designate of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution and in 2022 he took up the role of President.