Overview

Our Division uses big data to evaluate statistical links across all biological and medical fields.

The areas we focus on include looking at new medical imaging methods for understanding disease and informing care, discovering which groups of people are most likely to be at risk of disease within a given population group and developing informatics interventions in health care.

Our research

Informatics

Informatics research in the Division has an international reputation for research with a broad portfolio encompassing precision medicine, epidemiology, citizen driven health, public health, clinical trials and learning health systems.

Our staff come from disciplines such as clinical medicine, epidemiology, computer science, software engineering, statistics and mathematics, with a truly multidiscplinary approach to research.

We collaborate closely with the NHS and with academic centres and industry, both nationally and internationally. Our Health eResearch Centre (HeRC) is one of the nodes of the national Farr Institute and we are the home of the Connected Health Cities programme.

Imaging

Our imaging research is working to develop, validate and apply novel imaging and image analysis methods. We develop imaging methods to solve a wide variety of problems, particularly in the biomedical field. For instance, to better understand a variety of diseases, their management and treatment.

There is a broad scope of published imaging research and studies ongoing across the imaging facility sites in Manchester, including both preclinical and clinical studies in oncology, neurology, psychiatric disorders, musculoskeletal disease, cardiovascular disease, respiratory conditions and other inflammatory disorders.

We aim to facilitate wider use of imaging in research, clinical practice and industrial applications. We have multiple collaborations with industrial partners and have spun out five companies.

Data sciences

Our data sciences group works on the interpretation of datasets by building predictive models of biological systems using computer algorithms.

We have developed methods to uncover the patterns underlying gene expression changes in time and to uncover the complex network of molecular interactions between DNA and proteins which regulate this process.

We are also interested in how biological systems change and adapt over much longer evolutionary timescales using phylogenetic models. Models encode our hypotheses about how biological systems work.

Head of Division

Dr Andy Brass

Our researchers

View a list of researchers within the Division

Contact

Dr Andy Brass
tel: +44 (0)161 275 5096
email: andy.brass@manchester.ac.uk