ELLIS Summer School success at ELLIS Unit Manchester

After three successful events between 2023 and 2025, the ELLIS Society approved the ELLIS Unit Manchester's fourth summer school on Machine Learning for Healthcare and Biology. As in previous years, this three-day event brought participants up-to-speed on the latest methods and technologies in machine learning with a focus on healthcare and biology.

12 expert researchers visited from 8 European organisations, with sessions covering DNA language models for engineering biology; ‘Swarm’ intelligence; Real-world validation of healthcare LLMs and many more topics. Participants also had an opportunity to showcase their own work at our research poster session. ​​​

Speakers & Topics

The following researchers joined the Summer School to present on topics related to medical AI and machine learning in healthcare and biology:

• Chris Barnes (University College London and National Physical Laboratory) on "Using DNA language models to design and construct plasmids for engineering biology"

• Xu Chen (Queen Mary University of London) on "AI-Cardiac Digital Twins for Personalised Therapy"

• Sokratia Georgaka (The University of Manchester) on "Transformers and LLMs for biological data"

• Mobarak Hoque (The University of Manchester) on "Safety-Aligned Agentic AI for Clinical Decision Support"

• Huiqui Yvonne Lu (University of Oxford) on "AI, Healthcare, and Computing Systems: From Data to Swarm Intelligence"

• Raphaëlle Luisier (University of Bern) on "RNA in Wonderland: Charting new frontiers using AI for biological data"

• Raghav Mehta (Imperial College London) on "Fantastic Counterfactuals and how to utilize them in Medical Image Analysis"

• Goran Nenadic (The University of Manchester) on "Real-world validation of healthcare LLMs"

• Bartek Papiez (University of Oxford) on "Language and Vision in Healthcare: From Predictions to Explanations"

• Ewa Szczurek (Helmholtz Munich) on "Controllable generative AI for antimicrobial peptide design"

• Chris Tomlinson (University College London) on "Foundation models of electronic health records"

• Caroline Weis (GSK) on "AI4Science at GSK"

A Positive Experience

Feedback from attendees has been overwhelmingly positive:

I came back from Manchester with a notebook full of fresh ideas and a lot of inspiration. It was a fantastic opportunity to dive deep into the latest advancements in machine learning, especially the applications of Medical Al. The latest knowledge gained from global experts and the collaborative environment were amazing. Huge thanks to the Manchester Centre for AI Fundamentals, ELLIS, and The University of Manchester for hosting such a brilliant event.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 3-day ELLIS Summer School. The 12 lectures delivered by professors, lecturers, and senior researchers from leading universities across the UK and Europe enriched my understanding of how AI is being applied across diverse areas of healthcare. The breadth of research and the insightful discussions were truly inspiring. A big thank you to everyone at the University of Manchester for organising such an excellent event!

Check out even more feedback:

The ELLIS Summer School on Machine Learning for Healthcare and Biology was organised by Magnus Rattray, Mauricio A Álvarez, Chen Chen and Jason Hartford. ELLIS Unit Manchester is funded by The University of Manchester and in collaboration with Samuel Kaski's UKRI Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowship.

Webpage of the ELLIS Summer School at Unit Manchester on Machine Learning for Healthcare and Biology: https://www.ellismcr.org/ss2026

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