The Bioinformation Science group brings together researchers with backgrounds in mathematics, statistics and quantitative biology with the goal of developing new techniques for analysing complex evolving systems.

Group expertise lies in biological mathematics and biostatistics, with current research areas focus on population genetics, phylogenetics, and spatial modelling.

Capabilities

Ongoing projects in our main research areas can be summarised in categories:

• Solving transition distribution in allele frequencies in a population
• Modelling Markov processes along phylogenetic trees
• Inferring phylogenetic network due to deep coalescence and hybridization

Our group is in close collaboration with Research School of Biology and Fenner School of Environment & Society to solve fundamental and emergent problems in biology. Current projects can be summarised in categories:

• Understanding the evolution of plant tolerance to extreme environment
• Predicting species extinction risk under climate change
• Discovering the genetic basis of speciation

We also extend our research in population genetics and phylogenetics to other disciplines, including language evolution and galactic evolution.

We teach 2nd and 3rd year undergraduate and graduate Bioinformatics and Biological modelling, and coteach quantitative biology with Research School of Biology

We supervise research students interested in applied mathematics related to biology, and co-supervise research students with Research School of Biology and Research School of Finance, Actuarial Studies & Statistics.

Reasons to work with us

• We are experienced in modelling complex biological processes. Research outcome is over 20 recent papers in top journals of mathematical and computational biology on topics in population genetics and phylogenetics, and numerous earlier papers on various topics in bioinformatics.
• We are experienced in interdisciplinary collaboration. Research outcome is 7 papers in Nature journals, Science journals, and PNAS. Our work on language evolution was awarded 2021 Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research
• We are experienced in supervising research students. All the student research projects are published in peer-reviewed journals, including top journals
• In total, our group has published about 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters.