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Professor Michael Barnes

Michael

Professor of Bioinformatics, Director of the Centre for Translational Bioinformatics

Centre: Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine, Translational Bioinformatics

Email: m.r.barnes@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44(0) 20 7882 2059
Website: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/c4tb
X: @thebarneslab

Profile

Michael co-leads the Centre for Translational Bioinformatics (C4TB), at Queen Mary University of London and is a Fellow of the Digitial Environment Research Institute, QMUL. His team work across diverse research areas, including genomics, drug discovery, stratified medicine, machine learning and health informatics with a unified objective to drive forward translation into the clinic. He brings an industrial perspective to the C4TB, drawn from 16 years of leadership of bioinformatics teams in the pharmaceutical industry.

Michael is a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute and an HDR-UK Investigator, and co-leads the Genomics England Stratified medicine genomic interpretation clinical partnership. He has an active portfolio of stratified medicine projects as a co-investigator and data integration lead on several MRC projects, including MRC PSORT (Psoriasis), MRC RA-Map (RA), MRC MATURA (RA), and CLUSTER (Juvenile Arthritis). He also co-leads the NIHR AI-Multiply Consortium which is using AI to investigate the relationship between multiple long-term conditions and polypharmacy. He has served on the MRC Methodology Research Panel and Stratified Medicine panels and also advises on a number of project boards, including the UnitedHealth Group Pharmacogenetics advisory group, the Dutch Heart Foundation, the MRC-eMedLab HPC Cloud facility, the IMI etriks project, and the F1000 faculty. 

Research

Group members

Research staff: Claudia Cabrera, Rafael Henkin, Sandra Ng, Alisha Angdembe

PhD Students: Hannah Nicholls, Ruchi Upmanyu, Sara Maserone, Katriona Goldmann, Amaya Syed

Summary

Dr Barnes has broad computational biology research interests spanning the translational research and drug discovery continuum, from genetic and genomic methods for target identification to clinical informatics, patient stratification and multiple long term conditions. Active research projects in his team fall into the following key areas:

  • Pathway analysis of Genetic and Genomic data: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and exome studies of complex trait pathology and drug response, including, Hypertension, Arrhythmia and Cardiovascular disease.
  • Exome and Whole Genome Re-sequencing: NGS pipeline development, Re-sequencing studies, causal variant identification and functional analysis.
  • Multi-Omics and Stratified Medicine: RNA-seq based transcriptomic analysis, proteomics and epigenomics for biomarker identification and stratification of medicine response in Inflammatory diseases.
  • Trauma Injury Research: Transcriptomic and epigenomic analysis of early response to trauma injury as determinant of patient clinical trajectory in critical care. 
  • Chemogenomics and Drug Discovery: Target identification and druggability assessment, Chemogenomic analysis and connectivity map analysis. Drug Repositioning.
  • AI for Multiple Long Term Conditions (MLTC): Application of AI methods to MLTC research to explore MLTC pathology and identify intervention points.  
  • Clinical Informatics: Development of Clinical datamarts to support translational research and stratified medicine. Currently developing i2b2 and TranSMART based systems.
  • Cloud Computing: Development of virtual machine infrastructure for flexible scientific cloud computing across omics and clinical informatics applications. 
  • AI and Machine Learning: Development and application of explainable machine learning and AI methodology to clinical and genomic data. 

Publications

  • Eto F, Samuel M, Stow D et al. (publicationYear). Sex differences in trajectories to cardio-renal and mental health outcomes following the onset of type 2 diabetes: An observational cohort study using multi-state analysis in the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink. nameOfConference


    QMRO: qmroHref
  • Hussain AB, Andrew T, Warren RB et al. (2026). 0190 Predicting psoriasis biologic therapy outcomes: An explainable hybrid machine-learning approach applying real-world data. nameOfConference


    QMRO: qmroHref
  • Henkin R, Remfry E, Reynolds DJ et al. (2026). "We'll have to see how it works": An interview study to understand collaborative practices in interdisciplinary artificial intelligence and healthcare research. nameOfConference


    QMRO: qmroHref
  • Henkin R, Remfry E, Reynolds DJ et al. (publicationYear). “We’ll have to see how it works”: An interview study to understand collaborative practices in interdisciplinary artificial intelligence and healthcare research. nameOfConference


  • Gallagher-Syed A, Pitzalis C, Lewis MJ et al. (2026). ProtoPathway: Biologically Structured Prototype-Pathway Fusion for Multimodal Cancer Survival Prediction. nameOfConference


    QMRO: qmroHref
  • Pan S, Tsakok T, Wei R et al. (2026). Evaluation of a Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Strategy for Adalimumab in Psoriasis: A Prospective Pharmacokinetic‐Pharmacodynamic Study. nameOfConference


  • E Silva-Saffar S, Mariette X, Gottenberg J-E et al. (publicationYear). The SjD Map: an interactive pathway tour into Sjögren’s disease signalling mechanisms. nameOfConference


  • Voros S, Barnes MR, Watson D et al. (2026). Unraveling Emerging Data on Lipoprotein(a)-Driven Cardiovascular Disease via Multiomics: A Review. nameOfConference


  • Remfry E, Reynolds DJ, de Queiroz SM et al. (2026). Using Arts‐Based Methods to Involve People Living in Tower Hamlets With Multiple Long‐Term Conditions in the Development of Artificial Intelligence Tools in Healthcare Research. nameOfConference


  • Anderson S, Karlstaedt A, Young M et al. (2026). Targeting immunometabolic pathways with AZD1656 alleviates inflammation and metabolic dysfunction in type 2 diabetic cardiomyopathy. nameOfConference


View profile publication page

Sponsors

Collaborators

Internal

External

  • Prof Nick Reynolds (Newcastle)
  • Prof John Issacs (Newcastle)
  • Prof Christopher Griffiths (Manchester)
  • Prof Ann Morgan (Leeds)
  • Prof Folkert Asselbergs (UCL)
  • Dr Brendan Keating (UPENN)
  • Prof Jo Knight (Lancaster)
  • Dr Michael Weale (KCL)
  • Dr Gerome Breen (Institute of Psychiatry, KCL)
  • Prof Gerhard Ecker (University of Vienna)

Teaching

Undergraduate Education:

  • BSc Pharmacology and Innovative Therapeutics (BScPhIT): Lecturer Academic Advisor
  • MBBS: PBL facilitator

Postgraduate Education:

  • MSc Genomic Medicine: Lecturer; Project supervisor
  • BHF MRes: Lecturer
  • MSc Bioinformatics: Lecturer, Project supervisor
  • MSc Neuroscience and Translational Medicine
  • MSc Big Data
  • PhD supervisor: BHF non-clinical, AIDD, HDIP
  • Academic Clinical Fellows / Lecturers: Supervisor and mentor

External Education Activities:

  • Kings College London: External PhD Examiner
  • University of Edinburgh: External PhD examiner
  • PhD examiner

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