Bioinformatics covers all the areas in which computers and computational/mathematical techniques are applied in mining and interpreting the large quantities of sequence and structure data that have arisen from the work of experimental molecular biologists. The aim of this computational and analytical work is to bring to light the underlying principles which are hidden in these data, and to give us a better understanding of how biological systems operate at the molecular level: how proteins find their correct 3-dimensional structures, how proteins interact, how complex biological systems may have evolved from much simpler precursors, how genes are regulated in growth, development and ageing.

The work with which I was involved was used neural network algorithms and other mathematical techniques -- for example Fourier and wavelet transformation methods -- to try to predict how proteins fold and how they associate into more complex multimeric molecules. It was carried out in collaboration with Prof Janet M Thornton (formerly UCL Biochemistry, now at European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)), Dr Adrian J Shepherd, now Birkbeck Crystallography), Dr Kevin Murray (formerly UCL Biochemistry, EBI), Dr Hannes Postingl (formerly at EBI) and Dr Thomas Kabir (former joint UCL-CS/Biochemistry PhD student).