Prof Conrad Bessant

Conrad Bessant

Professor of Bioinformatics

School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences
Queen Mary University of London
bezzlab.github.io/
Centre for Molecular Cell Biology
Centre for Evolutionary and Functional Genomics
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Research

data science, computational biology, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, drug discovery

Interests

The scientifically rigorous use of machine learning to address bio/medical research questions is central to Conrad’s work. He pioneered machine learning applications in electroanalytical chemistry (Bessant & Saini, 1999) before transitioning to biology, where he has applied these approaches across fundamental biology, cancer research, and medical diagnostics (e.g., Dunkley et al., 2006; Hijazi et al., 2020; Saihi et al., 2023). More recently, his work focuses on applying AI to drug discovery and patient experience research (e.g., Branson et al., 2025; Byrom et al., 2023).

Conrad has collaborated extensively with industry, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector, and currently serves as academic lead of the UKRI-BBSRC AI for Drug Discovery Collaborative Training Partnership, an industry-focused doctoral programme comprising 27 doctoral students. He is also a co-founder of Mebomine Ltd, a Queen Mary spinout.

His group is part of the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences (SBBS) and is physically based at the Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI) in Whitechapel, London.