Funding boost for AI health research in Southampton
An interdisciplinary team at the University of Southampton is to begin a new study that will develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. They aim to improve analysis, interpretation, and clinical translation of newly discovered variations in the genome.
The team, led by Professor Sarah Ennis from the Faculty of Medicine, involves colleagues across the University in Chemistry, Biological Sciences, Electronics & Computer Science and Medicine.
They are funded with a UKRI grant of nearly £750,000 from the EPSRC led Artificial Intelligence Innovation to Accelerate Health Research programme. The funding was part of a £13 million investment from the government into projects aiming to transform health using AI to assist and refine diagnostics and procedures.
The “AI methods applied to GENomic DAta to improve health outcomes – AGENDA” project, will develop AI algorithms and modelling approaches for analysis of genomic data, map genomic data to biological pathways, improve computational modelling of proteins and use machine learning to predict outcomes for patients.
The team was established through the Institute for Life Sciences at the University of Southampton and is supported by the Southampton NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (SBRC). The SBRC is a longstanding partnership between the University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHSFT), working together to translate scientific discoveries into new treatments, diagnostics and medical technologies for patients.
Professor Ennis said: “This grant provides the opportunity to develop novel solutions for the analysis of genomic data. By incorporating an automated AI-based toolkit, we aim to maximise data usage, significantly speed up the return of molecular diagnoses, and identify biologically relevant targets for personalised therapies. In the future this will reduce hospital and treatment costs and provide digital systems, minimising the need for manual curation.
“Our diverse, interdisciplinary team highlights the ever-increasing value and importance of interdisciplinary science working on ‘big data’ to deliver better health. The team will directly benefit from working alongside the growing cadre of expertise in AI-related research in Southampton and is testament to our position at heart of AI health research in the UK.”
The team includes Sarah Ennis, Ellie Seaby, James Ashton and Guo Cheng from the Faculty of Medicine, Paul Skipp and Andy Shapanis from Biological Sciences, Jon Essex and Steven Turner from Chemistry and Jagmohan Chauhan from Electronics & Computer Science.
This latest funding follows the recent announcement of £31m to the University of Southampton to lead the Responsible AI UK consortium.
The grant will provide funding for post-doctoral research at the interface of mathematical modelling and genomics. Any early career researchers interested in joining the team should contact Professor Ennis on se@soton.ac.uk, Dr Ashton j.ashton@soton.ac.uk, or Dr Jagmohan Chauhan j.chauhan@soton.ac.uk.