Ian Simpson is a Reader in Biological Informatics and Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Biomedical Artificial Intelligence in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Biochemistry (Oxford University) and a D.Phil. in Genetics (Oxford University) where he studied the epigenetic regulation of gene expression. He has spent over 20 years studying brain development and function at the molecular level and has developed novel methodologies and tools to analyse developmental gene expression data using graphical, dynamic, and evolutionary models.

His main research interests lie at the boundary between Informatics and Biomedicine and focus on jointly modelling molecular and clinical data in neurological disease to better understand the underlying molecular mechanisms and how they relate to emergent phenotypes in patients. This approach has the potential to revolutionise diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment improving outcomes for patients and helping clinicians to benefit from the promise of data driven analytics in healthcare. Ian is a strong advocate of open science and public engagement in research, is a member of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), an alumnus of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland, and an active STEM Ambassador.