Career Profile

I'm Will Rowe, a software engineer currently working at GRAIL in the UK engineering team. I mainly work on software for running our clinical trials but I also contribute to the machine learning classifier and bioinformatics pipeline teams.

I like to work on algorithmic bioinformatics and "big data" problems, developing algorithms for a range of applications and incorporating the latest advances in data sketching, machine learning and graph theory into my software and research portfolio. I apply my algorithmic work to biological problems, such as: featurisation of genetic markers for population screening, real-time genomic epidemiology of viral outbreaks, gene dynamics in the gut microbiome, and antimicrobial resistance gene surveillance.

Employment Record

Staff Software Engineer

2023 - present

GRAIL

Senior Software Engineer

2021 - 2023

GRAIL

Postdoctoral Research Associate

2019 - 2021

University of Birmingham, Institute of Microbiology and Infection

Visiting Scientist

2019 - 2021

UK Research and Innovation, Science and Technology Facilities Council

Computational biologist

2017 - 2019

UK Research and Innovation, Hartree Centre (IBM/Science and Technology Facilities Council)

Postdoctoral Research Associate

2016 - 2017

University of Liverpool, Institute of Integrative Biology

Trainee Clinical Scientist

2015 - 2016

National Health Service, Addenbrooke’s Hospital (Cambridge University Hospitals)

Skills & Strengths

Languages
CC++GoJavaScriptPythonTypeScript
Bioinformatics
ARTICAntibiotic ResistanceBioinformaticsGenomicsMetagenomicsNanoporeResistome
Infrastructure
GroovyShell
Data & ML
Jupyter NotebookMinhashSketching

Software, Papers & Funding

Selected Papers

5295 citations, h-index 20. Please click on the abstract links for more information. Data fetched from Semantic Scholar on 22.4.2026.

  1. When the levee breaks: a practical guide to sketching algorithms for processing the flood of genomic data
    W. Rowe2019Genome Biology
  2. Indexed variation graphs for efficient and accurate resistome profiling
    W. Rowe, M. Winn2018bioRxiv
  3. Streaming histogram sketching for rapid microbiome analytics
    Will P. M. Rowe, A. Carrieri, Cristina Alcon-Giner, Shabhonam Caim, Alexander G. Shaw, Kathleen Sim, J. S. Kroll, Lindsay J Hall, Edward O. Pyzer-Knapp, Martyn D. Winn, Will P. M. Rowe, A. Paola2018Microbiome

Teaching, Leadership & Speaking

Genomics Masters module

2016-2017

Designed and taught content (lectures and workshops) for a module of the LIFE708 Masters degree at the University of Liverpool

Bioinformatics supervision

2016-2017

Provided bioinformatic supervision for PhD students at the University of Liverpool

Bioinformatics workshops

2016-2018

Organised and ran weekly bioinformatics workshops for the institute

HiPy

2016-2018

Assisted at university-wide Python workshops as an instructor