Jean-Baptiste Cazier

Originally trained as a Mathematical Modeller back in France, i have been working in the field now called Data Science for the past 25 years. Throughout my career, i have followed a convoluted path in academia and industry across several countries from Switzerland to Sweden via Iceland before reaching the UK. Along the way, I have been called a mathematician, a computer scientist, a statistician, a bioinformatician, a computational biologist, and an AI and data scientist. This experience across domains has led me to understand the importance of cross-disciplinary work, epitomised by the Crick.

I have actually joined the ancestor of the Crick, the CR UK London Research Institute, when I moved to the UK in 2006.

I then moved to the University of Oxford to lead research groups in Bioinformatics, at the Wellcome Trust for Human Genetics and the department of Oncology in 2008. Subsequently, I joined the University of Birmingham as chair of Bioinformatics in 2014 to create the highly cross-disciplinary Centre for Computational Biology (CCB), leading both research and teaching. This includes the creation of MSc Bioinformatics programmes in Birmingham, Dubai as well as online. As director of the CCB, I play a key strategic role for the establishment of Data Science and AI at the University of Birmingham, as well as the establishment of international partnerships with France, Belgium, Spain, Lebanon, Dubai, India, China, Brazil, Canada and US of A.

My research interest is very broad with method development and application with highlights in Data Science and AI, Genomics and Population Genetics using a wide range of data from *Omics to Clinical and Environmental , applied to a variety of conditions from Cancer to Cardio-vascular and rare diseases. Keywords to define my interest would be Diversity and Context as shown in my recent Turing fellowship in Population Diversity at varying scale.

I am now heading the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics STP, as well as the Data Science strategy, working with everyone to optimise how the Crick can best combine its wealth of data and expertise through the latest in Data Science.

Together, we can leverage effective Data Science and empower researchers to make discoveries about how life works.