Simon McDade | Professor of Functional Genomics
Queen's University Belfast

Simon McDade is Professor of Functional Genomics at Queen’s University Belfast and an entrepreneur working at the interface of science, technology, and healthcare. His research focuses on functional genomics, cancer biology, and precision medicine, with a particular emphasis on improving the efficacy of standard-of-care therapies through data-driven discovery. His interdisciplinary group collaborates across colorectal, prostate, head and neck, and childhood cancers, and he co-leads the Genomics and Cytometry Core Technology Unit, delivering state-of-the-art services across the island of Ireland. He also co-directs the Momentum 1.0 One Health Hub of Impact, which brings together academia and industry to drive secure, AI-enabled data innovation across health and life sciences. A long-standing advocate of data democratisation, McDade has led the development of open-source analysis and curation platforms (e.g. ClassifieR, SurvivR) and cloud-based environments that make complex genomic data usable by scientists, clinicians, and partners in industry. Beyond academia, he has co-founded and advised ventures that bridge discovery science with therapeutic innovation. He is currently Co-Founder and CEO of BlokBio, which is building the intelligence layer for biology: starting with RNA-seq workflows, but ultimately creating adaptive, AI-powered systems that standardise data across labs, capture knowledge from every experiment, and evolve into predictive decision-support tools across biotech, diagnostics, agritech, and healthcare. At Biotech X Europe 2025, Simon will discuss how integrative functional genomics approaches are being developed and applied in his group to identify novel therapy induced vulnerabilities. His perspective connects academic discovery, translational research, and biotech innovation, with a clear ambition: turning fragmented biological data into actionable intelligence that accelerates breakthroughs across the life sciences.