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Expert (Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Bioinformatics at the Employer) has a first-class education and research training in AstroPhysics. During post-doctoral work he became increasingly interested in the research problems in biology that required the input from physical scientists, and switched fields into bioinformatics in 1999 when he joined the laboratory of Professors Christine Orengo and Janet Thornton. His work in bioinformatics has focussed on extracting novel biological signals from very large datasets, developing algorithms in the areas of protein structure and transcriptomics analysis.

Expert's research expertise and background led to his appointment to a joint faculty position in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Mathematical Sciences at the Employer in 2004. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2009 and he is now the Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Biological Systems, that brings together faculty expertise from four departments at Essex and whose aim is to improve the interpretation of the data from experiments in the life sciences. Expert’s research programme at Essex has been acknowledged as international quality by the BBSRC, through the awarding of a grant (£474K), a Strategic Studentship and a China Partnering Award (with Expert Ming Chen of Zhejiang University). His BBSRC-funded research has resulted in 14 publications since the start of 2008. He is also an associate editor for BMC Bioinformatics, focussing on transcriptomics articles.

Expert’s transcriptomics research crosses many disciplines. He has given invited presentations at Physics and Control 2007 (Potsdam, Germany), Integrative Bioinformatics 2008 (Wittenberg, Germany), Chips, Computers and Crops 2008 (Hangzhou, China), the International Classification conference 2009 (Dresden, Germany), Computational and Integrative Biology 2009 (Hangzhou) and Integrative Bioinformatics 2010 (Cambridge). Expert also gave a keynote seminar at Bioinformatics in Genomics and Proteomics 2009 (Brno, Czech Republic), a meeting coordinated by the British Embassy in the Czech Republic, through the UK Science and Innovation Network. He has also given national presentations at RNA UK 2008 (Cumbria) and UK Affymetrix users meeting 2008 (Nottingham) where his speaking skills were recognised by the award of the prize for the best talk.

Expert is keen to pass on knowledge of BBSRC science to leaders in other fields. He collaborates with Expert Clara Sandoval, a lawyer in the world-renowned Human Rights Centre at Essex, and Expert Fabian Freyenhagen, a philosopher at Essex. They are exploring ways in which developments in genomic technology could be utilised in legal cases affecting societies and nations in transition, in order to help those societies achieve justice for past crimes. The University is strongly supporting these links, and has recently awarded Sandoval, Freyenhagen and Expert £50K to further develop a network on Transitional Justice.