Postgraduate research students

Currently I am in the early stages of my doctoral research project studying tropism and emergence of companion animal viruses with the University of Glasgow under the supervision of Dr Maxwell Farrell. This project aims to apply Large Language Models to study the factors that allow viruses of dogs & cats to evolve infectivity of different tissues or hosts. In addition, we are exploring the potential for the production of a veterinary research database which performs real-time AI-powered text mining to produce networks of host-virus diagnostic and evolutionary associations.

The first stage of my study currently comprises a genetic and protein sequence analysis of feline calicivirus. This analysis looks for factors associated with disease pathotypes in calicivirus by assessing genomic, protein, and clinical meta data. Machine learning models will be applied to determine which factors within this data are predictive of different disease pathotypes.

In addition, I am preparing and will soon be disseminating a survey on Veterinary Perspectives on AI. The purpose of this survey is to determine what the current opinion of AI is in the veterinary field. The survey will explore how veterinary clinicians, laboratory technicians, and researchers use AI in their work, and how they anticipate it being implimented in the future.  

I currently organise a text mining interest group within the University of Glasgow, which brings together researchers using text-based and related data extraction methods in their work for regular meetings and discussion. We welcome outside participation in this group, and if you would be interested in joining our mailing list and participating in our hybrid meetings, please contact me on my research email address above.

• Dr Maxwell Farrell
• Professor Willie Weir
• Professor Margaret Hosie

University of Glasgow Computational Biology Conference 2025

ISCAID Dublin 2026 (upcoming) - "Identifying genomic and protein sequence signatures of virulent systemic disease in feline calicivirus"

Demonstrator on:

- Omic Data Analysis and Visualisation, using R, for Biologists BIOL5254
- Data Exploration and Interpretation for Bioinformatics BIOL5379