Simon Wagstaff graduated in Biochemistry from Bath University in 1994 and obtained his PhD from Liverpool University in 1998. He then worked on the identification and commercialisation of novel markers of skeletal remodelling and on the molecular mechanisms underpinning skeletal remodelling and tumour proliferation.
After a 4 year break from full-time research as a Lecturer at Liverpool Hope, he joined the Alistair Reid Venom Research Unit, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in 2004 to work on an exciting new research program exploiting 'omics' technologies to improve the understanding and treatment of snake envenoming.
Simon established LSTM’s Bioinformatics Unit in 2011 and has since been engaged in a broad range of new collaborative research projects throughout LSTM’s portfolio.
Research
My main research interests are in the development and deployment of bioinformatics tools to translational tropical medicine. Initially this focused on snake venoms - a fascinatingly complex cocktail of components with the potential to interact with numerous other molecules distributed across diverse taxonomic groups. Like many biological samples, these complex cocktails are particularly amenable to a combination of high throughput sequence analysis, proteomic and metabolomic studies which we are applying to identify and characterise venom components and design new treatment for the immunotherapeutic treatment of snake bite.
Bioinformatics tools such as the design and construction of project-specific data management tools, protein and metabolite identification, sequence analysis, mapping, assembly, annotation and network analysis are applicable to a broad range of research questions.
I’m engaged in a number of collaborative projects with other research groups in LSTM, notably the exploitation of bioinformatic tools and network analysis to deduce complex relationships between ‘omics’ and high throughput screening datasets.
I'm particularly interested in new methods to integrate and visualise complex data from multiple sources.
As Head of Scientific Computing, I work closely with research groups across the institute to ensure that they have access to the best available computational tools and technologies to support their research.
Teaching
Co-convenor of Trop970 (Applied Bioinformatics). Contributions to other modules throughout the MSc portfolio.