Bioinformatics in the UK Track at ISMB / ECCB 2025

21 July 2025
11:20 am
– 8:00 pm
ACC Liverpool
King's Dock, Port of Liverpool, Kings Dock St
Liverpool
UK
L3 4FP

Join us for a special one-day UK track at ISMB / ECCB 2025, showcasing the best of British bioinformatics research, innovation, and talent. This track is part of the 33rd Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology and the 24th European Conference on Computational Biology (ISMB/ECCB 2025), the world’s largest bioinformatics and computational biology conference.

Focus areas

  1. Biodiversity & Agritech
  2. Health
  3. AI in bioinformatics

Programme features

  • Invited keynotes from academia
  • Including an industry panel
  • UK focus: offering a central space for national initiatives
  • Evening poster reception for socialising and networking

Track chairs

Prof
Carole Goble
The University of Manchester
Dame
Janet Thornton
EMBL-EBI

Important information

  • This track is open to all conference delegates
  • Only UK-based researchers can apply for a poster and/or talk
  • The evening poster reception provides an excellent opportunity for socialising and networking

Why participate?

  • Showcase your work to a global audience
  • Engage with the UK bioinformatics community
  • Network with peers and industry professionals
  • Opportunity for UK researchers to have a central voice at this major event

Call for abstracts

Call for abstracts is now closed.

Support for Early Career Researchers

We are committed to supporting the next generation of bioinformatics leaders. To encourage participation from Early Career Researchers (ECRs), we will be offering a limited number of registration fee bursaries for those with accepted abstracts. Information on the application process for these bursaries will be shared following abstract acceptance.

We strongly encourage ECRs to submit their work to this track.

For more information about the conference, please visit the ISMB/ECCB 2025 site.

09:00

Conference Plenary Keynote at the ISMB/ECCB 2025

10:45

Conference break and conference poster session

Bioinformatics in the UK track starts

Session 1.  Biodiversity and agritech and the UK

Chair: Neil Hall, Director, Earlham Institute

11:20

KEYNOTE. Molecular digitisation and biodiversity bioinformatics

Paul Kersey
Director of Research, Royal Botanical Gardens Kew

12:00

AI‑enhanced knowledge mining with KnetMiner: A bioinformatics platform for crop gene discovery

Arne De Klerk, Marco Brandizi, Sam Holegar, Alex Warr, Sardor Asatillaev and Keywan Hassani-Pak
Rothamsted Research

12:20

Lichen Cell Atlas: Tools for exploring photosymbiotic associations

Ellen Cameron, Gulnara Tagirdzhanova, Nicholas Talbot, Robert Finn, Mark Blaxter and Irene Papatheodorou
Earlham Institute, The Sainsbury Laboratory, EMBL-EBI, Wellcome Sanger

12:40

How can emerging AI technologies benefit multi-omic analysis for crop and soil sustainability

Laura-Jayne Gardiner, Senior Research Scientist: AI and informatics for life sciences
IBM

13:00

Lunch

Session 2.  Health and the UK

Chair: Peter Harrison, Deputy CTO, Health Data Research UK (HDR UK)

14:00

Civic data-driven innovation for global health and AI for all

Iain Buchan
W.H. Duncan Chair in Public Health Systems, Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Innovation, Civic Health Innovation Labs (CHIL), Director, Public Health, Policy & Systems, The University of Liverpool

14:20

KEYNOTE. Health data organisation and landscape across the UK.

Emily Jefferson
CTO, Health Data Research UK (HDR UK)

The COALESCE study

Angela Wood
Professor of Health Data Science, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge

15:00

TRE-FX platform for federated analytics of sensitive data in Trusted Research Environments

Tim Beck, Justin Biddle, Jonathan Couldridge, Grazziela Figueredo, Alexander Hambley, Alexandra Lee, Hazel Lockhart-Jones, Douglas Lowe, Chris Orton, Vasiliki Panagi, Andy Rae, Stian Soiland-Reyes, Simon Thompson, Carole Goble and Philip Quinlan
University of Nottingham, University of Manchester, Swansea University

15:20

SurvivEHR: A primary care foundation prediction model for multiple long-term conditions

Charles Gadd, Francesca Crowe, Krishnarajah Nirantharakumar and Christopher Yau
University of Oxford, University of Birmingham, King’s College London

15:40

Pathogen Analysis System (PAS): A scalable genomic data processing framework integrated with the European Nucleotide Archive

Eugene Ivanov, Senthilnathan Vijayaraja, Tony Burdett and David Yuan
EMBL-EBI, Earlham Institute

15:50

AI in Histopathology Explorer for comprehensive analysis of the evolving AI landscape in histopathology

Yingrui Ma, Shivprasad Jamdade, Lakshmi Konduri and Heba Sailem
King’s College London

16:00

Conference break and conference poster session

Session 3.  Trends in AI: A UK perspective

Chairs: Lucia Marucci, University of Bristol, UK, Eva Caamano Gutierrez, University of Liverpool and Urmi Trivedi, University of Edinburgh

16:40

Generative machine learning to model cellular perturbations

Mo Lotfollahi
Wellcome Sanger Institute

17:00

Building the world’s largest, ethically-sourced database of biological information to pioneer a new class of foundational AI models

Carla Greco and William Chow
Basecamp Research

17:10

Multimodal generative machine learning for non-clinical safety evaluations in drug discovery and development

Arijit Patra
UCB

17:20

CUPiD: a machine learning approach for determining tissue-of-origin in cancers of unknown primary from cell-free DNA methylation profiles

Alicia-Marie Conway, Simon P. Pearce, Alexandra Clipson, Steven Hill, Holly Cassell, Vsevolod J. Makeev, Caroline Dive, Natalie Cook and Dominic G. Rothwell
Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre, Christie NHS Foundation Trust and The University of Manchester

17:30

Introduction to AIBIO UK

Charlie Harrison
Aberystwyth University, UK

17:35

PANEL DISCUSSION: Careers and trajectories

Mo Lotfollahi, Wellcome Sanger Institute
Charlie Harrison, AIBIO UK
Gabriella Rustici, AstraZeneca
Harpreet Saini, Astex Pharmaceuticals

18:00

Poster session and networking event

20:00

End of day

Emily Jefferson
Chief Technology Officer, HDR UK
Angela Wood
Professor of Health Data Science, University of Cambridge and Associate Director of the BHF Data Science Centre
Paul Kersey
Deputy Director of Science – Research, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Arne De Klerk
Bioinformatics Engineer and the Product Owner at KnetMiner, Rothamsted Research
Ellen Cameron
Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Earlham Institute
Laura-Jayne Gardiner
Senior Research Scientist: AI and informatics for life sciences, IBM
Iain Buchan
W.H. Duncan Chair in Public Health Systems, Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Innovation, University of Liverpool
Peter Harrison
Deputy CTO, Health Data Research UK (HDR UK)
Tim Beck
Associate Professor in Federated Systems and Bioinformatics, University of Nottingham
Charles Gadd
Senior Postdoctoral Research Assistant, University of Oxford
David Yuan
Genomics Software Development Project Lead, Data Coordination Centre and Cloud Computing Manager, EMBL-EBI
Heba Sailem
Associate Professor in Federated Systems and Bioinformatics, University of Nottingham
Mo Lotfollahi
Group Leader, Artificial Intelligence for Cell Engineering Lab, Wellcome Sanger Institute
Carla Greco
Senior Bioinformatician, Basecamp Research
Arijit Patra
Senior Principal Scientist, UCB
Steven Hill
Lead Bioinformatician & Deputy Team Lead of the Bioinformatics & Biostatistics Team, Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre
Charlie Harrison
Research Software Engineer – Artificial Intelligence in the Biosciences, Aberystwyth University
Gabriella Rustici
Head of R&D Data Science Skills and Partnerships, AstraZeneca
Harpreet Saini
Senior Director, Bioinformatics, Astex Pharmaceuticals
Lucia Marucci
Professor of Systems and Engineering Biology, University of Bristol
A picture of Eva Caamaño Gutierrez, ELIXIR-UK member at University of Liverpool
Eva Caamano Gutierrez
Director of the Computational Biology Facility, University of Liverpool
Neil Hall
Director, Earlham Institute, and Head of Node, ELIXIR-UK
A profile picture of Urmi Trivedi, member of ELIXIR-UK
Urmi Trivedi
Bioinformatics Team Lead, University of Edinburgh
ELIXIR-UK
HDR UK
AIBIO-UK
BioFAIR
Astex Pharmaceuticals
  1. Eva Wan, Tony Burdett and Ed Clark. BioFAIR pathfinders: Driving adoption of FAIR solutions in UK life sciences 
  2. Ian Tsang, Fiona Leigh, James Cockram, Jonathan Atkinson and Steve Rawsthorne. High-throughput phenotyping of wheat root hair variation: Unlocking hidden traits for breeding
  3. Holly Cassell, Patrick Harker, Vsevolod J. Makeev, Florent Mouliere, Caroline Dive, Natalie Cook, Alicia-Marie Conway, Alexandra Clipson, Steven M. Hill and Dominic G. Rothwell. Optimisation of a cell-free DNA methylation-based classifier for determining tissue-of-origin in cancers of unknown primary
  4. Jack Welland and Janet Deane. From molecular dynamics to transcriptomics: Understanding glycolipid metabolism at different scales
  5. Zhiyong Tang, Guo Cheng, Sarah Ennis and Rob Ewing. Graph-based machine learning for multi-omics integration in complex disease analysis
  6. Lynn Win, Sarah Ennis and Guo Cheng. Rare and common variants in ERAP1 and ERAP2 selected for in response to Yersinia pestis infection contribute to autoimmune disease including inflammatory bowel disease
  7. Jennifer Kelly, Ash Evans, Ritesh Krishna, Muhammad Mohammadi, Prattyush Mangal, Stephen Checkley, Barbara Camanzii and Anna Paola Carrieri. Agentic AI for bioinformatics workflows
  8. Pedro Madrigal, Anil Thanki, Iris Diana Yu, Silvie Fexova and Christina Ernst. ExpressionAtlas: a Bioconductor package for search, retrieval and visualisation of bulk and single-cell expression datasets
  9. Aislinn Pearson and Richard Ostler. FarmOS: Using open source software to addressing the challenges of research quality farm data
  10. Elham Alhathli, Andrew Strange, Alexander Thompson, Sam Bonsall, Pamela Shaw and Johnathan Cooper-Knock. Causal associations of protein levels with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis through hypothesis-free two-sample mendelian randomisation and machine learning
  11. Pavle Josip Vrljicak. High-throughput biomarker discovery for antibody production using tag-based single-cell RNA-seq
  12. Katherine Brown and Andrew Firth. Mining public data reveals novel ancient and contemporary RNA viruses infecting parasitic nematodes of humans and ruminants.
  13. Stuart MacGowan, Jim Procter, Mateusz Warowny, Javier Sánchez Utgés, James Abbott and Geoff Barton. DRSASP: Expanding services, boosting performance and looking ahead
  14. Adeline McKie, Mark Wappett, Benayu Priyanto, Hans Vandierendonck and Ian Overton. Development and application of the MultiSEp R Package to identify multiple myeloma achilles’ heels for drug discovery
  15. Khaled Jumah, Katarzyna Kamieniecka, Mingkai Wang, Bjoern Gruening, Michael Baudis, Andrew Stubbs and Krzysztof Poterlowicz. hCNV2Beacon – a Galaxy workflow for integrated CNV detection and federated data sharing
  16. Cristina Sisu and Justin Dankwa. Exploring genetic variation in the British Nuclear Test Veterans
  17. Douglas Freeburn. Improving transcript characterization using Nanopore sequencing data
  18. Theo Redfern-Nichols, Shannon O’Brien, Xianglin Huang, Brian Medel-Lacruz, Davide Calebiro, Jana Selent, Graham Ladds and Maria Marti-Solano. A multi-dimensional analysis of receptor – G protein signal transduction: learning from rare disease variants
  19. Swarnima Kollampallath Radhakrishnan, Dipanwita Nath, Dominic Russ, Laura Bravo Merodio, Priyani Lad, Folakemi Kola Daisi and Animesh Acharjee. Machine learning-driven proteomic signature identification in colorectal cancer: Insights from the UK Biobank
  20. Alistair Dunham and Opentargets. Perturbation catalogue joint analysis of 1,954 multiplexed assays of variant effect
  21. Amen Shamim, Vanesa Biolatti, Conrado Guerrero Quiles, Mark Reardon, Jamie Honeychurch, Eleanor J Cheadle, Pedro Oliveira, Vodathi Bamunuarachchi, Rachel Reed, Kimberly Reeves, Peter Hoskin, Richard Walshaw and Ananya Choudhury. Profiling the tumour microenvironment to predict NAC response in bladder cancer
  22. Wendi Bacon, Adrian Westlake, Calum Macdonald, Chris Milner, Edel McNamara, Jamie Byrne, Loki Sinclair, Peter Hammans, Peter Harrison, Rachel Tesfaye, Ruth Milne, Sam Cox, Stephen Lavenberg and Emily Jefferson.  Easier validation, faster approvals: the safe people registry for streamlining safe people verifications
  23. Marielle Vigouroux, Naomi Davis, Arinder Kohli, Dorothy Dewan, Alexander Dickinson, Rupa Rai, Jake Turnbull, Hannah McGregor, Sarah Alexander, Jon Hubb and Jo Dicks. High-quality Oxford Nanopore assemblies reveal structural completeness, plasmid diversity, and antimicrobial resistance genes in NCTC bacterial genomes
  24. Qingli Guo, Maximilian Mossner, Freddie Whiting, Chloe Colson, Erica Oliveira, Ann-Marie Baker and Trevor Graham. Integrating single-cell cancer genome sequencing and matrix deconvolution to trace chemotherapy-induced mutagenesis