Dr Steven Watterson is a Computational Biologist at the Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine with research interests in cholesterol metabolism and cardiovascular disease.  Steven employs Systems Biology approaches to biomedical science and is interested in developing new tools and resources for use in biomedical science. 

Research Interests.  Steven’s research focuses on the networks of interactions that exist between genes, proteins and small molecules that determine biological function.  In particular, Steven is interested in how the dynamics of these networks alter in disease, how they vary within and between populations and how they can be reprogrammed therapeutically.

Teaching Interests.  Steven is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  He current serves as lecturer on the BSc and MSc degrees in Stratified Medicine.  He is a module coordinator for the BSc module BIO123 – Mathematical and Computational Methods 1 and the MSc module BIO826 – Mathematical and Computational Methods.

Background.  Steven has a first class MPhys Hons in Physics from the University of Edinburgh, a PhD in mathematics from Trinity College, Dublin and has studied non-equilibrium systems with Dr Chris Jarzynski at Los Alamos Laboratories.  He spent six years as a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh investigating the role of cholesterol metabolism in innate immunity in the lab of Prof Peter Ghazal at the Division of Infection and Pathway Medicine.  Here, he was part of the team to first uncover how cholesterol metabolism is regulated in response to cytomegalovirus infection.  Whilst at the University of Edinburgh, Steven also held joint appointments with the Centre for Synthetic and Systems Biology. 

Membership.  Steven is a member of the Life and Medical Sciences Advisory Committee of the Royal Irish Academy and currently serves on the editorial board of Frontiers in Synthetic Biology.  He is also a member of the European Atherosclerosis Society and the Genetics Society.