Ricky Qiu received a BSc degree and MSc degree in the School of Information Science and Technology from Fudan University, China. After receiving the PhD from Heriot-Watt University, he worked as a Research Fellow and Computing Team Leader at the University of Edinburgh from 2014 to 2024. Since Feb. 2024 he was appointed Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Computing.

His research area is in the intersection of machine learning, computer vision and biomedical sciences. His research has led to over 40 peer-reviewed journal and international conference publications, many of which were published in high-profile journals, including such as first-authored research articles in Science (cover-page article) and Neuron, and co-authored in Nature Communications, Neuron, Current Biology and IEEE TRANS journals.

He serves as a reviewer of several journals including such as IEEE TBME, IEEE TMI, Pattern Recognition and Cell Press Journals. He is also the receipt of the First Award of Shanghai Science and Technology Development Awards, and hold UK patent: An image restoration method (No. WO2014108708A1). He is a member of IEEE, BMVA and the SfN. He is currently a guest editor for the Journal of Imaging

He has been engaged extensively with research funding applications, having secured grants as PI, including a recent one from Royal Society, and as named fellow from Wellcome Trust, European Research Council (ERC), Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), etc.

Mental health disorders affects 1 in 6 people in the UK and cost the economy £110 billion annually. My research focuses on developing  advanced AI and computational approaches to better understand the fundamental mechanisms of these disorders and provide improved diagnostic and intervention methods. 

Currently I am particularly interested in the following areas of AI method development to combat mental disorders:

1. Generative AI and deep learning for neuroscience.
2. Vision foundation model for spatial omics
3. AI-driven computational bioimaging

I am open to research collaborations with respect to AI, computer vision and biomedical sciences. If you are keen to do a PhD in these areas in my group, please do not hesitate to enquiry me on [email protected]. Visiting scholars and students are also very welcomed. I also very welcome candidates from China Scholarship Council Programme.

Selected Publications

• Hao Fang, Zhe Liu, Yi Feng, Zhen Qiu, Pierre Bagnaninchi, Yunjie Yang, Multi-frequency electrical impedance tomography reconstruction with multi-branch attention image prior. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (under review).
• Dimitra Koukaroudi, Zhen Qiu, et al., Sleep deprivation targets synapse diversity in key brain centers of cognition and memory. Current Biology (2024), 34, 3836-3843. (IF = 9.2)
• Mélissa Cizeron*, Zhen Qiu* (*Equal contributions), et al., A brainwide atlas of synapses across the mouse lifespan. Science (2020) 369, 270-275. (IF = 63.7, cover article)

• Fei Zhu*, Mélissa Cizeron*, Zhen Qiu* (*Equal contributions), et al., Architecture of the mouse brain synaptome. Neuron (2018) 99, 781-799. (IF = 18.7)
• Edita Bulovaite, Zhen Qiu, et al., A brain atlas of synapse protein lifetime across the mouse lifespan. Neuron (2022) 110, 4057-4073. (IF = 18.7)
• Laura Tomas-Roca, Zhen Qiu, et al., Developmental disruption and restoration of brain synaptome architecture in the murine Pax6 neurodevelopmental disease model. Nature Communications (2022) 13, 6836. (IF=17.7)
• Zhen Qiu, Lei Yang, Weiping Lu, A new feature-preserving nonlinear anisotropic diffusion for denoising images containing blobs and ridges. Pattern Recognition Letters (2012) 33, 319-330. (IF = 4.76)
• Lei Yang, Zhen Qiu, Alan Greenaway, Weiping Lu, A new framework for particle detection in low-SNR fluorescence live-cell images and its application for improved particle tracking. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering(2012) 59, 2040-2050. (IF = 4.76)

Funding and Grants

• Project PI, Functional and molecular analysis in the study of PTSD, Royal Society, IEC\NSFC\242504, January 2025 - January 2027

• AC41011 - Advanced Big Data Analysis
• AC51011 - Big Data Analysis
• CS11002 - Introduction to Software Development
• DI12009 - Java Programming
• AC51003 - Software Engineering
• CS11002 - Introduction to Software Development
• CS12002 - Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms