FRANCESCA BUFFA

Teaching is a natural complement to research, and essential to form the next generation of computational and data scientists. I aim to help providing them with the necessary knowledge to tackle the big and complex data challenges we are currently facing in biology and medicine.

I am Full Professor at the Department of Computing Sciences, Bocconi University. I am the recipient of a European Research Council Award with sits at Bocconi University, where I supervise a team delivering novel computational tools, and the University of Oxford, where I supervise a lab generating and analyzing genomics and high-throughput screen data. Prior to this I was a Full Professor of Computational Biology and Cancer Genomics, and Group Leader, at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. I hold a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of London, United Kingdom, and a degree in Theoretical Physics from the University of Turin, Italy.

My main research topic is Artificial Intelligence in Life Sciences. I focus on the application of machine learning to biomedicine, genomics - the study of the structure, expression, function and evolution of the genome, and transcriptomics - the study of the complete set of RNA transcripts that are produced by the genome in a specific context and time.

As rapid developments in genomics, transcriptomics and other “omics” are revolutionizing biology and medicine, powerful computational methods are needed to translate this data into knowledge, and ultimately to improve human health.