Professor Anil Wipat
Prof of Integrative Bioinformatics

  • Email: anil.wipat@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 222 8213 or 208 3212
  • Fax: +44 (0) 191 222 8232
  • Address: Room 914, Claremont Tower
    School of Computing Science
    University of Newcastle upon Tyne
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU

Introduction

Anil Wipat gained a first degree in a Applied Biology from John Moores University. He returned to Liverpool following a year in the BioElectronics group at Cranfield Biotechnology Institute and completed a PhD in Molecular Microbiology.

He then spent a year in industry working firstly as a Software Engineer and subsequently as a Research and Development Scientist. In 1990 he joined Newcastle University as postdoctoral researcher studying firstly the regulation of alpha toxin in Gram Positive bacteria before working on research projects aimed at sequencing and functional analysis of the genome of the Gram positive bacteria Bacillus subtilis. In 1995 he was appointed as temporary lecturer in Microbial Genomics and spent a further 4 years within the Microbiology Department at Newcastle. In 2000, Anil gained a Masters with distinction in Computing Science from Newcastle, with a placement at the European Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge. After returning to Newcastle, he accepted a post as a Bioinformatics research fellow in the Faculty of Agriculture.

He joined the School of Computing Science in 2001 as a Lecturer in Bioinformatics.

Anil is the degree programme director for the MSc Bioinformatics and Computational Systems Biology at Newcastle University.

His research interests are focussed on integrative bioinformatics, systems and synthetic biology. His group researches strategies for data integration in bioinformatics at various levels from the local integration of 'omics' datasets as probabilistic integrated functional networks, through to the integration of remote heterogeneous databases (ONDEX).

His group are investigating approaches to facilitate an integrative and systems approach to biology, with a particular emphasis on ageing and nutrition, as part of the BBSRC/EPSRC funded Newcastle Centre for the Integrative and Systems Biology of Ageing and Nutrition (CISBAN). Methods for model annotation by data integration have been developed as part of the SAINT project.

The group also researches and develops e-Science and Cloud computing technology to tackle problems in biological data analysis, simulation, and integration, and are interested in how the biological sciences can, in turn, drive developments in computing science. In particular, the group is developing technology for data integration, computational modelling and comparative genomics (e.g. Microbase).

Prof. Wipat also researches computational design strategies for Synthetic Biology, with a focus on the role of modelling and data integration in the design of biological systems. Laboratory facilities have been estalished in collaboration with the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology allowing computational designs to be tested in-vivo.

The biological applications of his research are quite diverse ranging from microbiology and metagenomics, through to the mechanisms of human genetic disease and ageing. Traditionally the group has a strong interest and background in microbial genomics and functional genomics particularly for Gram-positive microorganisms such as Bacillus and relatives.

Please see my homepage for further information.