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Dr Robert Free

Research Fellow in Biomedical Informatics

University of Leicester

Lead and co-ordinate technical/research efforts in biomedical informatics to facilitate data-driven research within respiratory research at Leicester, including a research database used for cohorting and data-driven research. I am co-investigator on the RECHARGE and EXCEED (a Leicester-based primary care cohort) projects and informatics lead in the East Midlands Breathomics Pathology (EMBER) node and partnership. Research interests include experimental development of informatics tools to help with the collection and handling of data through new tools, pipelines and data standards; and using data-driven approaches such as AI and machine learning to improve technologies and extract knowledge from existing clinical data to make potential differences to clinical practice.

Interests

  • Data-driven tools for improving collection and integration of biomedical data.
  • Use of AI/machine learning and visual approaches to enhance informatics tools.
  • Analysis of clinical data sets to extract new knowledge, in particular looking at pneumonia and TB.

Education

  • PhD (Molecular Microbiology and Bioinformatics), 2005

    University of Leicester

  • BSc (Molecular Genetics), 2001

    University of Sussex