Nikolas Pontikos

Nikolas Pontikos is an Associate Professor at the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, leading the Pontikos Lab since 2019. He serves as Deputy Director (Data Science) at the Moorfields Reading Centre & Clinical AI Lab until April 2025 and co-founded the startup Eye2Gene Ltd. His academic journey began with a Computer Science undergraduate degree at UCL and continued with an MSci in Bioinformatics (Imperial College) and a PhD in Statistical Genetics (University of Cambridge).

• Education
  • BSc Computer Science & Engineering, University of Calcutta
  • MSc Bioinformatics, Imperial College London
  • PhD Statistical Genetics, University of Cambridge

His research focuses on cross-disciplinary healthcare AI, combining genomics, medical imaging, and clinical text analysis to create decision support systems for inherited retinal diseases. He leads projects like Eye2Gene (AI-driven genetic diagnosis) and SynthEye (synthetic retinal imaging generation). His 15 most recent publications demonstrate expertise in AI applications for macular fibrosis, keratoconus, and genomic data harmonization, with methodological innovations in conformal prediction, unsupervised representation learning, and deep learning.

Scientific Recognition

• NIHR AI Award (2022-2025)
• Moorfields Eye Charity Career Development Fellow (2019-2020)
• Chartered Fellow of British Computer Society (2023-2024)

He has directly mentored 10+ students and interns, including current PhD candidates Quang Nguyen and Lynn Kandakji. His lab collaborates with institutions like UCL Institute of Health Informatics, University of Bonn, and Tokyo Medical Centre, while maintaining partnerships with Springer Nature, Springer Science+Business Media, and the European Bioinformatics Institute.