Lab focus: bioinformatics, genomics, statistics and software development

My laboratory uses statistical methodologies to provide new insights into the genetic basis of health and disease. Medical research is embracing high-throughput technologies that generate large and complex data sets. Rapid advances in this field require the development of advanced software tools.

We develop specialised analysis methods for large and complex biological datasets. We collaborate with research groups throughout the Institute to uncover changes in gene regulation that occur during normal blood development and in the context of diseases such as cancer. Our research has accelerated the development of more effective cancer therapies and our statistical methods are extensively used by researchers worldwide to make new discoveries.

Research interest

Our time is divided evenly between methodological work and primary data analysis of both in-house experiments from our collaborators and public datasets to provide new insights in gene regulation in health and disease.

We develop statistical methods and open-source software that are tailored to solve problems in genomic analysis in medical research. Our software is freely available as part of the Bioconductor project.

Current projects include:

• Statistical methods for modeling variation in RNA-sequencing data.
• Software for interactive visualisation of gene expression data.
• Software for single-cell gene expression data analysis.
• Analysis of long-read sequencing data.
• Exploration of epigenetic and genetic regulation in development and cancer.