Simon Hubbard
Head of the School of Biological Sciences
Simon took up the role of Head of the School of Biological Sciences in August 2023, having previously been the Faculty's Associate Dean for Research and Innovation.
A Professor of Computational Biology, Simon has previously held the roles in the Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics.
He studied Biology and Physics as an undergraduate before completing a PhD in Biochemistry at UCL where he used bioinformatics to study protein structure – before the term had even been invented. A postdoc in structural bioinformatics at EMBL Heidelberg followed, before returning to the UK, joining UMIST on a Wellcome fellowship in 1995.
He has been in Manchester ever since, becoming a Research Group leader and then Section Head following the merger of the two universities in 2004, and a Head of Division in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at its inception in 2016.
Simon's research interests lie in the molecular biology of how genes are expressed and converted into proteins, using quantitative mass spectrometry and other 'omics approaches to understand how processes like proteostasis are regulated.
His group have developed several popular bioinformatics tools, such as Naccess for structural biologists, as well as tools for quantitative proteomics.