Ayse Demirkan

Dr Ayse Demirkan is a Senior Lecturer in AI Multiomics for Health and Wellbeing at the University of Surrey’s School of Biosciences, affiliated with the Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence (PAI). Her research focuses on integrating multi-omics data with artificial intelligence to understand genetic and environmental interactions in metabolic disorders, cancer comorbidities, and microbiome-related health outcomes.

Her work emphasizes genetic epidemiology, particularly in diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, alongside microbiome studies exploring links to Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer. She develops computational tools like the comorbidPRS R package for polygenic risk assessment and has pioneered methods to analyze mRNA-miRNA interactions in chronic diseases.

Key research themes include:

• Systems biology approaches to multi-omics integration
• Machine learning applications in genetic studies
• Microbiome-host interactions in disease progression
• Personalized medicine strategies for metabolic dysfunction

Recent publications highlight her contributions to understanding flavan-3-ols’ cardiovascular effects, bile microbiome signatures in pancreatic cancer, and shared genetic predispositions between diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Her research bridges computational innovation with clinical translation, aiming to improve stratified healthcare strategies.