Conrad Bessant

Prof Conrad Bessant is a Professor of Bioinformatics at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), affiliated with the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences. He leads the MSc Bioinformatics program and is academic lead of the UKRI AI for Drug Discovery Doctoral Training Programme. His research focuses on automating scientific discovery in biomedicine using AI, machine learning, and network science. Key areas include drug response prediction, kinase networks, and health data analytics from online forums.

Research interests span data science, computational biology, and AI applications in healthcare. He has contributed to projects on tumor microenvironment analysis, proteomics, and biomarker discovery in rheumatoid arthritis. His work integrates multi-omics data with machine learning to identify therapeutic targets and predict drug responses.

Recent grants include AI-driven omics data integration (BBSRC), biomarker studies in ALS (Barts Charity), and collaborations with pharmaceutical companies like Exscientia and Merck.

Publications highlight contributions to automated cell identification, kinase network modeling, and health informatics. He has pioneered tools like MRMaid for proteomics and Galaxy workflows for transcriptomics-informed analyses.