Barry John Ryan

Nationality: Irish

EPFL SV GHI UPFELLAY
AAB 2 19 (Bâtiment AAB)
Station 19
1015 Lausanne

EPFL SV GHI UPFELLAY
AAB 2 19 (Bâtiment AAB)
Station 19
1015 Lausanne

Expertise

AI for Health - Artificial Intelligence - Multi-Omics - Graph Neural Networks - Biological Networks - Translational Medicine - Personalised Health

Mission

The goal of my research is to tackle the messiness of real-world biomedicine. Issues such as patient variability, batch effects, and artefacts all degrade biological signal. My aim is to implement robust AI models that reveal true biological signal and translate them into clinical insights.
Barry joined the Professor Jacques Fellay’s Lab of Human Genomics of Infection and Immunity in October 2025, after completing his PhD at the University of Edinburgh under Professor Ian Simpson in the area of Biomedical Artificial Intelligence. Dr Ryan comes from a computational background, having studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering in University College Cork (UCC), Ireland. He first began to train in Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) during a master’s year in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. This was where he first developed an interest in interdisciplinary biomedical applications of ML and AI. Ever since, he has enjoyed tackling problems of biological data integrations, characterising Parkinson’s Disease phenotypes, and now, identifying clinical insights for HIV disease research. 

Education

Biomedical Artificial Intelligence

| A Novel Network-Based Approach to Integrate Biological Datasets for Patient Disease Prediction

2021 – 2025 The University of Edinburgh

Computer Science - Data Science

|

2020 – 2021 Trinity College Dublin

Electrical and Electronic Engineering

|

2015 – 2019 University College Cork

Selected publications

Multi-Omic Graph Diagnosis (MOGDx): a data integration tool to perform classification tasks for heterogeneous diseases

Barry John Ryan, Riccardo Marioni, Ian Simpson
Published in Bioinformatics in 2024

An integrative network approach for longitudinal stratification in Parkinson’s disease

Barry John Ryan, Riccardo Marioni, Ian Simpson
Published in PLOS Computational Biology in 2026

Genetic determinants of HIV-1 elite control

Barry Ryan, Jacques Fellay, Christian W Thorball
Published in Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS in 2026

Integration of datasets for individual prediction of DNA methylation-based biomarkers

Barry John Ryan, Charlotte Merzbacher, Thibaut Goldsborough, Robert F Hillary, Archie Campbell, Lee Murphy, Andrew M McIntosh, David Liewald, Sarah E Harris, Allan F McRae, Simon R Cox, Timothy I Cannings, Catalina A Vallejos, Daniel L McCartney, Riccardo E Marioni
Published in Genome Biology in 2023

Combining clinical embeddings with multi-omic features for improved patient classification and interpretability in Parkinson’s Disease

Barry John Ryan, Chaeeun Lee, Riccardo E Marioni, Pasquale Minervini, T Ian Simpson
Published in MedRXiv in 2025