Dr Ricky Qiu

Ricky’s research area is in the intersection of artificial intelligence, computer vision and biomedical engineering. His research has led to over 40 peer-reviewed journal and international conference publications, many of which were published in high-impact journals, including such as research articles in Science (co-first author, cover-page articles), Nature Communications, Neuron, Current Biology, IEEE TBME, IEEE TMI, etc. He serves as a reviewer of several journals including such as IEEE TBME, IEEE TMI, Pattern Recognition, Nature Communications, Cell Press Journals, Scientific Reports, etc. 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 Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), and as named fellow from Wellcome Trust, European Research Council (ERC) etc.

Mental health disorders affect 1 in 6 people in the UK and cost the economy £110 billion annually. His current research focuses on developing advanced AI and computational approaches to provide improved diagnostic and intervention methods for mental healthcare. Currently, he is particularly interested in the following areas of AI method development for mental healthcare:

1. AI and deep learning for prediction and prognosis of mental disorders.
2. AI foundational models for mental healthcare
3. Generative AI for brain atlasing

Prospective PhD students, visiting scholars and students are encouraged to contact Dr.Qiu by email [email protected]. 

Selected Publications

• Mélissa Cizeron*, Zhen Qiu* (*Equal contributions), Babis Koniaris, Ragini Gokhale, Noboru Komiyama, Erik Fransén, Seth Grant, A brainwide atlas of synapses across the mouse lifespan. Science (2020) 369, 270-275. (cover article)
• Laura Tomas-Roca, Zhen Qiu, Erik Fransén, Ragini Gokhale, Edita Bulovaite, David Price, Noboru Komiyama et al., Developmental disruption and restoration of brain synaptome architecture in the murine Pax6 neurodevelopmental disease model. Nature Communications (2022) 13, 6836.
• Fei Zhu*, Mélissa Cizeron*, Zhen Qiu* (*Equal contributions), Ruth Benavides-Piccione, Maksym Kopanitsa, Nathan Skene, Babis Koniaris et al., Architecture of the mouse brain synaptome. Neuron (2018) 99, 781-799.
• Edita Bulovaite, Zhen Qiu, Maximilian Kratschke, Adrianna Zgraj, David Fricker, Eleanor Tuck, Ragini Gokhale et al., A brain atlas of synapse protein lifetime across the mouse lifespan. Neuron (2022) 110, 4057-4073.
• Dimitra Koukaroudi, Zhen Qiu, Erik Fransén, Ruth Benavides-Piccion, Noboru Komiyama Julie Seibt, Seth Grant, Sleep deprivation targets synapse diversity in key brain centers of cognition and memory. Current Biology (2024), 34, 3836-3843.
• 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.
• 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). 

Funding and Grants

• Project PI, Functional and molecular analysis in the study of PTSD, Royal Society, IEC\NSFC\242504, January 2025 - January 2027.
• Project PI, Cost-effective AI for Human Brain Synaptome Mapping, Royal Society of Edinburgh, May 2025 - May 2026.

• CS11002 - Introduction to Software Development
• CS12002 - Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms
• AC41011 - Advanced Big Data Analysis
• AC51011 - Big Data Analysis
• AC51003 - Software Engineering
• ME51012 - Medical Image Processing and Analysis