Centre for Integrative Biology

The Centre for Integrative Biology consists of bioinformaticians, mathematical biologists, epidemiologists and statisticians who support and develop the viral diseases-led research of the Institute. The CIB has a dual role, carrying out its own research programme, and also providing support to IAH scientists involved in quantitative biology. Members collaborate closely with laboratory and field scientists and strengthen the design and analysis of in vivo and in vitro studies on host-pathogen interactions and of national and international surveillance and epidemiological activities at IAH.

As well as collaborating with scientists at other research organisations, the CIB is involved in networks such as EPIZONE and the Global Foot-and-Mouth Disease Research Alliance (GFRA), and actively engages with the public and stakeholders through lay publications and participating in events such as the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.

The Centre current includes the following areas and example research questions:
Epidemiology: predicting the risk of incursion, spread and control of viral threats to the UK and the rest of the World, including the impact of different environmental change scenarios.
Systems biology: understanding within-host dynamics of disease, including host-virus interactions at the whole animal and cellular level.
Molecular networks: learning and predicting networks of biomolecular interactions from post-genomic data sets and analysing genes and genomes to predict the function of DNA, RNA and protein molecules.
Bioinformatics: analysis and integration of biomolecular sequence data with quantitative data sets to associate genetic/genomic differences with traits of interest; modelling of virus evolution using next-generation sequencing data; in silico analysis of host genetics and genomics data.
Statistics robust statistical analysis and statistical model development for biological data, including the association of disease phenotype with host, vector or pathogen genetic markers.
Informatics state-of-the-art data management and integration systems for biological data sets.

For further details please see the Institute's Research pages or visit the individual Research Groups: