Dr Tom Thorne

I am currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Surrey.

Previously I was a Lecturer at the University of Reading, a Safra Research Fellow at Imperial College London, a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and a postdoc in the Theoretical Systems Biology group at Imperial College London.

Research

My research focuses on applications of statistical methodologies to problems in Systems Biology and Bioinformatics, specifically:

Graphical modelling of gene regulatory networks
Statistical analysis of protein-protein interaction networks
Approximate and likelihood free methods for inference

Publications and Software

Publication list

Recent publications and preprints:

Joint graphical model estimation using Stein-type shrinkage for fast large scale network inference in scRNAseq data Vo DHT, Syed N, Thorne T, arxiv, 2025.
Calibration of stochastic, agent-based neuron growth models with Approximate Bayesian Computation Duswald T, Breitwieser L, Thorne T, Wohlmuth B, Bauer R, Journal of Mathematical Biology 89 (5), 50, 2024.
Shrinkage estimation of gene interaction networks in single-cell RNA sequencing data Vo DHT, Thorne T, BMC Bioinformatics 25 (1), 339, 2024.

Software:

scmixture - Bayesian mixture modelling of single cell transcriptomics
NetDiff - Bayesian model selection for differential gene regulatory network inference Thorne T, Scientific Reports, 6:39224, 2016. R package.

Group Members

PhD students:

Huan Huang – Systems biology analysis of data from GBM, with Dr Nelofer Syed.
Duong Vo – Network inference from single cell data.

Past students:

Marcela Akemi Ishihara – Visiting PhD student from Butantan Institute.
Ivis Kerama – PhD, with Dr Richard Everitt.
Niharika Paul – LMS undergraduate research project.
Tom Wilson – Summer research project.