About Prof Magnus Rattray

Magnus Rattray began his academic career carrying out research at the interface of statistical physics, machine learning and bioinformatics while based in the University of Manchester’s Computer Science Department.

He was appointed Professor of Statistical Bioinformatics and Machine learning at the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience in 2010 before returning to the University of Manchester’s Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health in 2012 as Professor of Computational and Systems Biology.

From 2016-25 he led the University’s AI strategy as Director of the University of Manchester Institute for Data Science and AI, contributing to a substantial growth in the University’s AI activity over the period, and establishing the successful and ongoing Advances in Data Science and AI annual conference.Over this period, he served as a Turing Fellow and was Manchester’s Turing University Lead, coordinating the University’s membership of the Turing Institute and associated research activities.

In 2019 he was appointed Fellow of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) on the ELLIS Health Programme and from 2020-24 he was co-president of the Machine Learning for Computational Systems Biology (MLCSB) COSI of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), coordinating the most popular COSI session of the major international bioinformatics conference ISMB. He is founding Director of ELLIS Unit Manchester (from 2021) which fosters links with leading European machine learning researchers through international PhD student exchanges and hosting of popular events such as Manchester’s ELLIS Summer School in Machine Learning for Healthcare and Biology.

Magnus Rattray’s current research is focuses on the development of modern machine learning approaches for dealing with large-scale datasets from omics and imaging technologies. His group’s research is supported by major awards from the Wellcome Trust and UKRI. He leads the computational modelling on a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award that aims to uncover the mechanisms underlying gene expression dynamics during early embryonic development.

He also leads the Generative Biology working group of the £12M EPSRC AI-hub on Generative Models, bringing together researchers from seven institutions across the UK to develop cutting-edge Generative AI technology. He is a co-leader of the data pillar of the £25M MRC Centre of Research Excellence in Exposome Biology, and major centre between the Universities of Manchester and Oxford that seeks to uncover the immunological mechanisms that mediate the effects of environmental exposures on inflammatory disease.

He has collaborated closely with colleagues at the CRUK Manchester Institute over the last decade and hopes to deepen these links over the next few years, using data-driven approaches to uncover the mechanisms underlying cancer initiation, progression and treatment.