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From bleeding disorders to AI: BioGeMT Symposium unites Malta’s researchers

On Friday 25 September 2026, researchers and collaborators gathered at the University of Malta’s Valletta Campus for the Bioinformatics for Genomics in Malta (BioGeMT) Symposium.

The event closed the BioGeMT Summer School, “AI/ML Applications in Bioinformatics 2026”, and showcased the range of research and collaborations involving the BioGeMT team.

Opening the symposium, BioGeMT ERA Chair Dr Panagiotis Alexiou, described the project’s aim of building a permanent bioinformatics team at the University of Malta. The team develops and applies computational methods, including machine learning, to help researchers interpret genomic and other omic data. The afternoon’s talks showed how that expertise connects researchers working on clinical questions, experimental biology and new computational methods.

Daniel Farrugia presented research into bleeding disorders that remain unexplained after standard laboratory testing. His study combines whole-exome sequencing with specialised tests of blood clotting. BioGeMT contributed to the sequencing analysis, while the findings underscored the importance of interpreting genetic variants alongside clinical evidence.

Prof. Emmanouil Maragkakis explored the changing life of RNA molecules. He presented RNAkinet, which combines machine learning with direct RNA nanopore sequencing of nucleotide analogues to study RNA dynamics, including how long individual RNA isoforms persist in cells.

Prof. David Saliba turned to antibody discovery. His talk showed how nanopore sequencing can reveal the diversity of recombinant antibody libraries and track which antibody sequences become enriched through successive rounds of phage-display selection.

Marichela Schembri described genetic studies of osteoporosis in Malta, including research into the possible overlap between bone health and type 2 diabetes. Max Stróżyk presented AtlasMSI, an autoencoder-based approach to analysing and segmenting images produced by MALDI mass spectrometry imaging.

Prof. Rosienne Farrugia addressed a challenge in clinical genomics: the close similarity between the PKD1 gene and its pseudogenes can lead to misleading variant calls.

She presented long-read sequencing evidence concerning a likely pseudogene artefact and ParaDISM, a bioinformatics pipeline designed to identify such artefacts.

Michał Startek discussed how the scoring rules used in sequence alignment can be learned from labelled pairs of sequences. His talk introduced DiscrimAlign and nwgrad, an alignment engine developed to make this approach more efficient.

Prof. Stephanie Bezzina Wettinger showed how an SQL database brings together the TargetMI project’s clinical, genetic and molecular data, making it easier to ask questions across different layers of information.

Dr Brendon Scicluna presented research comparing monocytes from younger and older adults to investigate an age-associated immune state that may be relevant to susceptibility to sepsis.

Closing the scientific programme, Katarina Gresova presented Genomic Benchmarks QC. Using examples including miRBench, she showed why dataset quality and bias matter when researchers compare machine-learning models for genomics.

Together, the talks illustrated the breadth of bioinformatics research connected through BioGeMT: from bone and kidney disease, cardiovascular research and immunology to antibody engineering, RNA biology, algorithms and reliable machine-learning benchmarks. They also showed the value of close collaboration between researchers who generate or use biological and clinical data and those who develop the methods needed to analyse it.

In his closing remarks, Prof. Jean-Paul Ebejer reflected on the collaborations established through BioGeMT and future directions for bioinformatics and AI-driven genomics research in Malta. He emphasised the need for sustainable bioinformatics support as a shared service across research projects at the University of Malta, encouraging researchers to involve bioinformaticians from the outset so that study design, data generation and analysis are planned together.

He also welcomed new collaborations, highlighting the team’s readiness to help design bioinformatics analyses and contribute to grant proposals, bringing computational expertise into projects from their earliest stages.
The organisers thank the speakers, whether attending in person or online, and everyone who joined them at Valletta Campus.

½ñÈÕºÚÁÏ BioGeMT

Bioinformatics for Genomics in Malta (BioGeMT) is an ERA Chair project funded by the European Union under Horizon Europe's Widening Participation and Spreading Excellence programme (grant agreement no. 101086768), with an EU contribution of almost €2.5 million.

Coordinated by the University of Malta and running from December 2022 to November 2027, the project hosts an expert bioinformatician and team within the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking, working alongside the University's molecular genetics research groups.

Its aim is to build lasting bioinformatics and machine learning expertise at the University of Malta, so that patient-derived multi-omic and clinical data can be turned into a better understanding of disease. Malta's population genetics and large family structures make it well placed to shed light on the genetic basis of disease, and the project builds on existing biobanks and sample collections, including one with more than 2,000 whole genomes and RNA-Seq datasets.

In the longer term, BioGeMT aims to establish a specialised bioinformatics centre in Southern Europe, strengthen Malta's competitiveness for international research funding, and support the national strategy to grow ICT for health.