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Dr. James Wilson

Associate Professor

Computational Biology | Machine Learning in Genomics

[email protected]+44 1865 123456Oxford, United Kingdom
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3Experiences
8Skills
02

Summary .

Associate Professor of Computational Biology at the University of Oxford with over a decade of experience in applying machine learning to genomics ands drug discovery. Published 45+ peer-reviewed papers in journals including Nature, Cell, and Genome Research.

Principal Investigator on £2.5M+ in research grants from UKRI, Wellcome Trust, and European Research Council. Supervised 12 PhD students and 8 postdoctoral fellows.

03

Experience .

Associate Professor of Computational Biology

University of Oxford • Oxford, UK | Sep 2019 – Present

Lead research group of 15 members developing ML methods for genomics and drug discovery.

  • Principal Investigator on 4 active research grants (£2.5M+ total)
  • Published 18 papers since appointment, including 3 in Nature journals
  • Supervised 4 PhD students to completion
  • Teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in computational biology

Lecturer in Bioinformatics

University College London • London, UK | Jan 2015 – Aug 2019

Established independent research program in ML for genomics.

  • Awarded Wellcome Trust Henry Dale Fellowship (£1.2M)
  • Published 15 papers including first senior author Nature paper
  • Developed MSc course in Machine Learning for Life Sciences

Postdoctoral Fellow

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) • Heidelberg, Germany | Oct 2012 – Dec 2014

Developed deep learning methods for functional genomics data integration.

  • Published 5 papers as first author
  • Received EMBO Long-Term Fellowship
04

Education .

University of Cambridge

Doctor of Philosophy
Oct 2008 – Sep 2012

PhD thesis on machine learning methods for protein structure prediction, supervised by Prof. Sir Alan Fersht.

Imperial College London

Master of Science
Oct 2007 – Sep 2008
GPA: 4.0/4.0 (Distinction)

Specialized in statistical genomics and computational methods.

University of Edinburgh

Bachelor of Science
Sep 2003 – Jun 2007
GPA: First Class Honours

Interdisciplinary degree combining pure mathematics with molecular biology.

05

Skills .

Computational Methods

Deep LearningStatistical GenomicsBioinformaticsSingle-cell Analysis

Programming & Tools

PythonRPyTorchTensorFlow
07

Certifications .

Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology

Royal Society of Biology
Sep 2021

Associate Fellow - Higher Education Academy

Advance HE
Mar 2016
08

Languages .

Languages

English • nativeFrench • conversationalGerman • basic
09

Awards .

European Research Council Starting Grant

European Research Council
Jan 2020

€1.5M grant for project "DeepGenome: Machine Learning for Functional Genomics"

Wellcome Trust Henry Dale Fellowship

Wellcome Trust
Mar 2015

Prestigious 5-year fellowship for early-career researchers (£1.2M)

EMBO Young Investigator

European Molecular Biology Organization
May 2018

Recognition of exceptional young researchers in life sciences.

Best Paper Award

RECOMB 2019
Apr 2019

Best paper at RECOMB conference for deep learning in genomics.

11

Publications .

Deep learning for prediction of drug-target interactions

Wilson J, et al. • Nature Methods • Mar 2023

Novel graph neural network approach for predicting drug-target interactions.

Read Publication →

Single-cell multi-omics integration using transformers

Wilson J, Smith A, Chen L • Cell Systems • Aug 2022

Transformer-based architecture for integrating single-cell RNA-seq and ATAC-seq.

Read Publication →

Genome-wide association studies meet deep learning

Wilson J, Davies R • Genome Research • May 2021

Machine learning in structural biology: a decade of progress

Wilson J (Review) • Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology • Nov 2020
13

Conferences .

AI for Drug Discovery: From Genome to Clinic

Gordon Research Conference on Drug Discovery | Jul 2023

Keynote lecture on our lab's work applying ML to drug target identification.

View Slides →

Deep Learning for Single-Cell Genomics

ISMB/ECCB 2022 | Jul 2022

Invited talk at computational biology's largest conference.

Transformers for Biological Sequence Analysis

NeurIPS Workshop on Machine Learning for Health | Dec 2021
View Slides →
15

References .

Prof. Sir Alan Fersht

Professor of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
PhD Supervisor
[email protected]

Prof. Dame Janet Thornton

Director Emeritus
EMBL-EBI
Postdoc Mentor
[email protected]
17

Research Interests .

My research focuses on developing and applying machine learning methods to understand biological systems:

  • Deep Learning for Genomics: Developing transformer architectures for DNA/RNA sequence analysis
  • Drug Discovery: Predicting drug-target interactions and drug response
  • Single-Cell Biology: Multi-omics integration and cell type identification
  • Protein Structure: ML methods for structure and function prediction

Current funding: ERC Starting Grant, UKRI AI for Science, Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award

© 2026 Dr. James Wilson. All Rights Reserved.