Michael Nicholson

Michael Nicholson

Chancellor’s Fellow

School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh

About me

Welcome. I am an applied mathematician based in Edinburgh, UK.

I am a Chancellor’s Fellow in Health and Life (~ Assistant Professor), based in the School of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh.

I’m broadly interested in applying mathematical modelling to genomics, with a particular focus on cancer. Mathematically, I adopt a stochastic process centred approach, building mechanistic models in order to quantitatively explore hypotheses, and infer fundamental mutational and evolutionary parameters. These models are then used to analyse various genomic data. Biologically, I focus on somatic evolution, with a specific emphasis on how mutations arise and contribute to cancer development. Please get in touch if you’re interested in undertaking an applied mathematics PhD combining mathematical modelling, data science, and genomics.

A list of my papers can be found on this site or on my Google Scholar page.

I am an organiser of the Mathematical Biology seminars at the School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh.

Interests
  • Somatic and cancer evolution
  • Mutagenesis
  • Stochastic modelling & statistical inference
Education
  • Cross Disciplinary Research Fellowship, 2020-2024

    University of Edinburgh

  • Postdoctoral Fellow, 2018-2020

    Harvard University and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

  • PhD in Physics, 2014-2018

    University of Edinburgh

  • MMath in Mathematics, 2008-2014

    University of Edinburgh

Papers

(2024). Quantifying "just-right" APC inactivation for colorectal cancer initiation. biorxiv.

DOI URL

(2024). Strand-resolved mutagenicity of DNA damage and repair. Nature.

Cite DOI URL

(2024). DNA lesion bypass and the stochastic dynamics of transcription-coupled repair. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cite URL

(2023). Sequential mutations in exponentially growing populations. PLOS Computational Biology.

Cite URL

(2022). Signatures of TOP1 transcription-associated mutagenesis in cancer and germline. Nature.

Cite DOI URL

Supervision

  • Xell Brunet-Guasch, PhD student in mathematics. Co-supervised with Tibor Antal and Ian Tomlinson.
  • James Hayes, PhD student in human genetics. Co-supervised with Martin Taylor.
  • Jessica Codling, PhD student in mathematics. Co-supervised with Martin Taylor.

Contact