Data science, computing and maths research

The Department carries out research on a range of topics in the fields of data science, computing and maths. 

Researchers in the Department are currently focused on the following areas:

• Big data approaches to identifying genes that make microbes more dangerous by increasing the frequency or severity of disease, or by conferring drug resistance;
• Implementing computational tools for analysing thousands of microbial genomes;
• Developing statistical theory for joint Bayesian and classical hypothesis testing.

Research highlights

• Discovering antibiotic resistance genes in tuberculosis, in collaboration with the CRyPTIC project
• Finding human genes that make people more susceptible to COVID-19, in collaboration with the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative
• Linking microbiological data from the UK Health Security Agency to UK Biobank to facilitate large-scale research into infection, including COVID-19
• Harnessing machine learning to predict which types of contaminated meat led to food poisoning cases using DNA
• Identifying a notorious toxin as the cause of tropical muscle Staphylococcus aureus infections in Cambodian children, in collaboration with the Oxford Tropical Network
• Developing the harmonic mean p-value to improve the detection of signals in big data problems while controlling false positives