- Date(s)
- July 3, 2025
- Location
- Riddle Hall (Lecture Room 1) Queen¡¯s University ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ 185 Stranmillis Rd, ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ BT9 5EE
- Time
- 09:30 - 17:00
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the biosciences, offering powerful tools to uncover complex biological patterns, accelerate discovery, and drive innovation in healthcare, agriculture, and biotechnology. From understanding molecular mechanisms and disease progression to optimising diagnostics and drug development, AI is becoming an indispensable partner in bioscience research and application.
This Workshop brings together researchers and innovators to explore how AI can accelerate scientific discovery and address pressing challenges in health, antimicrobial resistance, and nutrition. It is part of the Northern Ireland Landscape Partnership in AI for Bioscience (NILAB), a BBSRC-funded doctoral training programme dedicated to advancing AI-bioscience research and talent development, with support from Centre for Sustainable and Intelligence Computing (CISC). It aims to:
- Share recent advances and research challenges at the intersection of AI and the biosciences.
- Foster academic and industrial collaborations in the form of PhD supervision, student placements, guest lectures, and joint research initiatives.
- Provide inputs from academic and industrial communities to help shape the vision and scope of the NILAB Programme.
Contacts: Prof Hui Wang (Director of NILAB) at nilab@qub.ac.uk
Workshop Programme
| Time | Session | Speaker | Title |
| 09:30–09:50 | Registration & Coffee | ||
| 09:50–10:00 | Welcome Remarks | Prof. Hui Wang, Dr Muhammad Fahim, QUB | |
| 10:00–10:30 | AI Driven Discoveries in Biomedical Sciences | Prof. Georgios Leontidis, Aberdeen University | AI Methods in Agriculture and Climate: Advances and Current Trends |
| 10:40–11:10 | Prof. Pietro Liò, Cambridge University | AI for medicine | |
| 11:20-11:50 | Dr Mengyue Yang, Bristol University | Learning Meta-Causal Worlds with Curious Agents | |
| 12:00-12:30 | Prof. Manuel Salto-Tellez, QUB | Digital Pathology & Artificial Intelligence - Clinical Applications | |
| 12:30-13:00 | Prof. Ben Collins, QUB | Chemoproteomics in Drug Discovery – Opportunities for AI? | |
| 13:00–14:00 | Lunch and Networking | ||
| 14:00-14:40 | NILAB: Vision and Scope | Hui Wang, Iain Styles, and Jane Zheng | AI in NILAB |
| Olaide Oyelade, Univ of Chichester | Hypothesis discovery | ||
| Ying Yang, QUB | Signature discovery | ||
| Ben Redden, QUB | Causality discovery | ||
| 14:40-15:30 | Prof. Ilias Kyriazakis, QUB | Animal Welfare in NILAB | |
| Prof. Amy Jayne McKnight, QUB | Human Health in NILAB | ||
| Prof. Helene McNulty, UU | Nutrition in NILAB | ||
| Prof. Jose Bengoechea, QUB | AMR in NILAB | ||
| 15:30-16:00 | Coffee and Networking | ||
| 16:00–17:00 | Co-Creating the Future with the Industry: Lightning Talks chaired by Prof Ben Collins | Allister Pattison, Oxford Instrumennts | Questions for AI in Smart Microscopy and Quantitative Image Analysis |
| Simon McDade, BlockBio | Rewriting the Genomics Workflow: Intelligence, Automation, and the Scientist’s New Role | ||
| Colin O'Dowd, Almac Discovery | Use of AI/ML models to predict protein destabilisation and subsequent function induced with small molecule covalent modifiers | ||
| Panel discussion chaired by Prof Tom Gray | Panelists: Tom Gray, Dermot Leonard, Allister Pattison, Simon McDade, Colin O'Dowd | From Insight to Impact: What Can Academia Deliver for Industry AI Needs? | |
| 17:00 | Closing Remarks | Prof. Helene McNulty, UU | |
Title: AI Methods in Agriculture and Climate: Advances and Current Trends
Speaker: Prof. Georgios Leontidis, University of Aberdeen
Biography: Prof. Leontidis is Deputy Director of the £11M SUSTAIN CDT and Professor of Machine Learning at Aberdeen, leading university-wide AI strategy. He directs multiple major projects, including EPSRC and ESA initiatives, and focuses on self-supervised learning and its applications in agri-food, environment, and energy. He is an editor and area chair for top AI venues (ICLR, NeurIPS, TMLR), a BMVC chair, and a member of ELLIS and Scotland’s Beyond Net Zero group.
Title: AI for Medicine (tentative)
Speaker: Prof. Pietro Liò, University of Cambridge
Biography: Prof. Liò is Professor of Computational Biology at Cambridge and a key member of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine. He holds PhDs in Complex Systems and Theoretical Genetics and is a Fellow and Council Member of Clare Hall, as well as a member of ELLIS and Academia Europaea.
His research combines AI and computational biology to tackle disease complexity and support personalised medicine. He focuses on Graph Neural Networks, integrating multi-omics and mechanistic models, medical digital twins, and interpretable AI. His work spans predictive modelling, explainability, and decision support systems that increase individual and societal health awareness.
Title: Learning Meta-Causal Worlds with Curious Agents
Speaker: Dr. Mengyue Yang, University of Bristol
Biography: Dr. Yang is Lecturer in AI at Bristol and a recognised Rising Star in AI (2024). Her research spans causality, reinforcement learning, and world modelling. She earned her PhD from UCL and is active in interdisciplinary research and academic community building.
Title: Digital Pathology & Artificial Intelligence – Clinical Applications
Speaker: Prof. Manuel Salto-Tellez, Queen’s University ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ
Biography: Prof. Salto-Tellez is Chair of Molecular Pathology at QUB and leads the Precision Medicine Centre of Excellence. He also holds roles at the ICR and Royal Marsden. With over 330 publications and £100M in grant funding, he is a leading figure in translational and digital pathology. His work focuses on integrating phenotype and genotype for biomarker discovery in cancer.
Title: Chemoproteomics in Drug Discovery – Opportunities for AI?
Speaker: Prof. Ben Collins, Queen’s University ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ
Biography: Prof. Collins leads the NI Centre of Excellence for Chemoproteomics and co-directs QUB’s proteomics platform. Formerly at ETH Zurich, his work includes DIA-MS development, protein interaction networks, and applications in immunity, cancer, and drug discovery. He received the HUPO Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award in 2020.
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