Ben McGuirk

I joined QMUL in October 2024 as a PhD student working on workstream 1 of CanDetect. Prior to this I did my BSc in biomedical science and my MSc in computer science at the University of Birmingham. As a result, I have gained valuable interdisciplinary experience completing research projects in cardiovascular medicine and machine learning. I’m excited to now be applying this knowledge in CanDetect, whilst learning from the numerous experts on the programme. 

PHD – Development of machine learning models for the early detection of upper gastrointestinal cancers in primary care. 

With the integration of multiple data types (blood test trends, symptoms, comorbidities), my work will involve various machine learning approaches. This may include traditional models such as logistic regression, random forest or deep neural networks, as well as more advanced transformer architectures such as BEHRT or MedBERT.