Dr Ralf Weber

Dr Ralf Weber

School of Biosciences
Director of Bioinformatics, Phenome Centre Birmingham (PCB)
Centre for Environmental Research and Justice (CERJ)

Contact details

Telephone
+44(0)121 414 3388
Email
r.j.weber@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@ralf_weber
View my research portal
Address
415, School of Biosciences

Ralf Weber is the Director of Bioinformatics for the Phenome Centre Birmingham. His research team’s interests include the development and application of data processing, biostatistics and data mining tools to facilitate biochemical annotation and interpretation of clinical and toxicological metabolomics data. Dr Weber is a member of the Centre for Environmental Research and Justice (CERJ).

Qualifications

  • PhD Computational Metabolomics (University of Birmingham)
  • BSc Bioinformatics (HAN University of Applied Sciences)

Biography

Ralf Weber is the Director of Bioinformatics for the Phenome Centre Birmingham. He obtained his BSc degree in Bioinformatics from the HAN University of Applied Sciences in Nijmegen (Netherlands). In 2007 he moved to the University of Birmingham where he completed a PhD in computational mass spectrometry-based metabolomics.

He continued to work as a Research Fellow from 2010 – 2016 and was involved in a variety of clinical, toxicology and computational-focused research projects. During spring 2016 he was a visiting researcher at the School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology (China).

Currently, he is the module lead for the ‘omics’ science component of the MSc Bioinformatics course at the University of Birmingham. He is a co-founder of and trainer in the Birmingham Metabolomics Training Centre since 2015, and a past committee member of the Early-career Members Network of the international Metabolomics Society from 2013 – 2016. He is currently a member of the Boards of Directors of the international Metabolomics Society.

Teaching

Module lead for the MSc Bioinformatics (Module 4 - Metabolomics and advanced (omics) technologies)

He teaches on various modules across the years on subjects such as programming, bioinformatics and metabolomics.

He also provides Undergraduate and Masters research projects.

Postgraduate supervision

Ralf currently supervises and co-supervises PhD students in the area of Bioinformatics and computational  Metabolomics.

Students interested in working with Ralf on any of the above research areas should contact him directly at r.j.weber@bham.ac.uk

Research

His research team’s interests include the development and application of data processing, biostatistics and data mining tools to facilitate biochemical annotation and interpretation of clinical and toxicological metabolomics data.

https://github.com/computational-metabolomics

Other activities

Board member of the international Metabolomics Society (2018 - present)

Publications

Full publications list

 

Recent publications

Thomas N. Lawson, Ralf J. M. Weber, Martin Jones, Mark R. Viant, Warwick Dunn, msPurity: Automated Evaluation of Precursor Ion Purity for Mass Spectrometry-Based Fragmentation in Metabolomics, Analytical Chemistry 89 (4): 2432–2439 (2017)

Andrew D. Southam, Ralf J. M. Weber (Co-first Authorship), Jasper Engel, Martin R. Jones and Mark R. Viant, High-Resolution Spectral-Stitching Nanoelectrospray Direct Infusion Mass Spectrometry-based Metabolomics and Lipidomics: A Complete Workflow, Nature Protocols 12, 310–328 (2017)

Ralf J. M. Weber, Thomas N. Lawson, Reza M. Salek, Christoph Steinbeck, Pablo Moreno, Ken Haug, Timothy M. D. Ebbels, Robert C. Glen, Albert Koulman, Markus Ralser, Warwick B. Dunn, Mark R. Viant, Computational tools and workflows in metabolomics: An international survey highlights the opportunity for harmonisation through Galaxy, Metabolomics (2017)

Martin Larralde, Thomas N. Lawson, Ralf J. M. Weber, Kenneth Haug, Philippe Rocca-Serra, Mark Viant, Chris Steinbeck and Reza M Salek, mzML2ISA & nmrML2ISA: generating enriched ISA-Tab metadata files from metabolomics XML data, Bioinformatics (2016)

Julie Mazzolini, Ralf J. M. Weber, Hsueh-Shih Chen, Abdullah Khan, Emily Guggenheim, Robert K Shaw, James K Chipman, Mark R. Viant, Joshua Z. Rappoport, Protein corona modulates uptake and toxicity of nanoceria via clathrin-mediated endocytosis, Biol Bull 231(1): 40-60 (2016).

Robert L. Davidson, Ralf J.M. Weber (Co-first Authorship), M. R.Viant, ‘A comprehensive galaxy workflow for processing and analysing mass spectrometry-based metabolomics datasets’, GigaScience 5(10) (2016).

View all publications in research portal