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Analysis

Bioinformatics

The Bloomsbury Centre for Bioinformatics is a research, support and training Centre, established as a joint venture between UCL and Birkbeck College in 2004. There are 21 affiliated research groups that span disciplines such as protein structure prediction and classification, genomic and transcriptomic data analysis, statistical genetics and systems biology. The Director of the Centre is Professor David Jones and the Strategy Board comprises Professor Christine Orengo, Dr. Mike Hubank and Dr. Adrian Shepherd. Research at the Centre is firmly focused on delivering tools and analysis that address global biomedical research questions. This is reflected in the large number of collaborative projects researching themes such as stem cells, cancer, cardiovascular genetics, perception and relief of pain, childhood diseases, HIV and immunology. The Centre has particular strengths in protein structure prediction and classification hosting internationally-accessed databases. Technology used in protein structure prediction was commercialised with the formation of Inpharmatica, a UCL spin-out company. The centre is staffed by academics across disciplines in Computer Science, the Faculties of Life Science and Biomedicine at UCL, and Birkbeck College. Support and training are core activities for the Centre. Centre staff provide a range of courses addressing the needs of post-graduate students and staff, detailed below.

The R.A. Fisher Centre of Computational Biology is an interdisciplinary centre of excellence for mathematical and computational analysis of the fast-growing data in genetics and biology. It was established to commemorate the extraordinary contributions to both statistics and genetics by R.A. Fisher. The Centre is directed by Professor Ziheng Yang FRS, and comprises staff from GEE as well as other departments within the Faculty of Life Sciences who work at the interface between mathematics/statistics/computer science and biology.

Biostatistics

Biostatistics is now a fundamental scientific component of biomedical, public health and health services research. The UCL Partners Biostatistics Network is a network of medical statisticians from various departments across UCL Partners. It has been developed to improve communication between medical statisticians, and to help build a stronger presence of statisticians involved in medical research within these institutions. The UCL Partners Biostatistics network is open to all statisticians working in medical research within UCL Partners.

The Biostatistics Unit at the Eastman Dental Institute has a teaching and support service.

The Institute of Child Health has a Statistical Support Service. 

The UCL Genetics Institute has an outreach service for core support in bioinformatics and statistical genetics which is available to UCL and its partners.

Computational Statistics and Machine Learning

The Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning (Director: Professor John Shawe-Taylor) spans three departments at UCL, Computer Science, Statistical Science, and the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit. The Centre will pioneer an emerging field that brings together statistics, the recent extensive advances in theoretically well-founded machine learning, and links with a broad range of application areas drawn from across the college, including neuroscience, astrophysics, biological sciences, complexity science. There is a deliberate intention to maintain and cultivate a plurality of approaches within the centre including Bayesian and frequentist statistical methods. The Centre has a number of interdisciplinary collaborations with biomedical groups. One on-going project is to develop a better predictor for cardiovascular disease using genetic and phenotype data. CSML holds regular clinics to facilitate collaborations with UCL researchers. Contact Prof. John Shawe-Taylor with expressions of interest (jst@cs.ucl.ac.uk).

Training

A wide range of short courses in bioinformatics and biostatistics are provided to students and staff through the UCL Graduate School Skills Development programme. 

Introduction to Bioinformatics (1 day)

Introduction to Bioinformatics (5 days)

Basic Statistics for Research (e-learning)

Statistics for Researchers

Introduction to MATLAB

Adaptive Modelling of Complex Data

Research Computing offer training courses on use of Legion.

UCL Information Services Division offers training in statistical software and programming.