I currently head the IDA Section within the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow.

I received a BSc honours degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Heriot-Watt University in 1991 and a DPhil in Physics from the University of York in 1996, and then spent 3 years in industry working at Oxford Molecular Ltd. developing bioinformatics software before taking up a BBSRC Fellowship at University of Warwick, studying the application of multi-agent systems for data integration in bioinformatics.

After my postdoc position at Warwick, I was awarded an EU Individual Marie Curie Fellowship at INRA in Paris to further develop the idea of autonomous multi-agent systems for bioinformatics data analysis. A system was developed that allowed different labs at INRA to collaboratively annotate evolutionary related species of lactobacillus (lactis, debrukei and sakei - used for cheese, yogurt and fermented sausage!). Each lab had control over its own annotation processes while the systems collaborated with each other on shared annotation when this was relevant.

I then moved to the Department of Computer Science at UCL to take up a Fellowship position analyzing gene expression profiles of stem cells; leading onto a lectureship position, senior lecturer and associate professor in bioinformatics and systems biology where we applied machine learning and AI techniques to protein structure, biological networks, -omics data and histopathology images, collaborating with bioscience groups mostly in the area of cancer.