PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Robert Hoehndorf

Robert Hoehndorf is a computer scientist whose research on knowledge representation and neuro-symbolic methods is applied to the life sciences. After a 2009 PhD at Leipzig University and research posts in the UK at Aberystwyth University, the University of Cambridge and the European Bioinformatics Institute, he joined KAUST in 2014 and was promoted to associate professor in 2020. His group developed the DeepGO methods for protein function prediction, from the 2017 DeepGO classifier to DeepGO-SE, which appeared in Nature Machine Intelligence in 2024. In 2022, he became Editor in Chief of the Journal of Biomedical Semantics and Interim Associate Director of KAUST's Computational Bioscience Research Center. He is an associate professor of computer science at KAUST and principal investigator of its Bio-Ontology Research Group.

Now at
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and Computational Bioscience Research Center

Timeline

  1. 2005–2009

    Computer science at Leipzig

    He earns a Diplom-Informatiker degree in computer science at Leipzig University in 2005 and a PhD in computer science there in 2009.

  2. 2009–2014

    UK posts and PhenomeNET

    He works in the UK as a research fellow at Aberystwyth University, a research associate at the University of Cambridge, and a postdoctoral fellow at the European Bioinformatics Institute. In 2011, he publishes PhenomeNET in Nucleic Acids Research with Paul Schofield and Georgios Gkoutos, a cross-species network of phenotypic similarity between genotypes and diseases.

  3. 2014

    Assistant professor at KAUST

    He joins King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in 2014 as an assistant professor of computer science.

  4. 2017

    The DeepGO classifier

    In 2017, he coauthors DeepGO with Maxat Kulmanov and Mohammed Asif Khan in the journal Bioinformatics. The deep learning model combines protein sequences with a cross-species protein–protein interaction network and shows a significant improvement over BLAST for predicting cellular locations.

  5. 2020

    Promotion to associate professor

    KAUST promotes him from assistant to associate professor in 2020, after a year-long review of his scientific and scholarly output. His Bio-Ontology Research Group, based in the Computational Bioscience Research Center, primarily works on finding variants in genomes that cause disease.

  6. 2022

    Journal editor and center leader

    In 2022, he becomes Editor in Chief of the Journal of Biomedical Semantics, is elected a Bye Fellow at Robinson College, University of Cambridge, and is named a Leibniz AI Fellow at Leibniz University of Hannover. In September 2022, he also becomes Interim Associate Director of KAUST's Computational Bioscience Research Center.

  7. 2024

    DeepGO-SE in Nature Machine Intelligence

    In February 2024, Nature Machine Intelligence publishes DeepGO-SE, built with Maxat Kulmanov, Stefan Arold and coauthors under his supervision. The method predicts Gene Ontology functions from protein sequences with a pretrained language model and ranks in the top 20 of more than 1,600 algorithms in an international function prediction competition.

  8. As of October 2026

    Associate professor at KAUST

    He is an associate professor of computer science at KAUST and principal investigator of its Bio-Ontology Research Group, whose work centers on knowledge representation and neuro-symbolic methods in the life sciences. Since 2021, he is also Track Leader of the Bioinformatics & Machine Learning Track in KAUST's Bioengineering Program.

Career

  1. Since 2014King Abdullah University of Science and TechnologyAssistant Professor of Computer Science, Interim Associate Director
  2. NowComputational Bioscience Research CenterPrincipal Investigator
  3. From 2022University of CambridgeResearch Associate, Bye Fellow
  4. Aberystwyth UniversityResearch Fellow
  5. European Molecular Biology LaboratoryPostdoctoral Fellow

Education

  1. 2009Leipzig UniversityDiplom-Informatiker and PhD in computer science

From the biography.

  1. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Robert Hoehndorf | Associate Professor, Computer Science | Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering cemse.kaust.edu.sa. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. PhenomeNET: a whole-phenome approach to disease gene discovery - PMC pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Appointment of Prof. Xin Gao as Interim Director and Prof. Robert Hoehndorf as Interim Associate Director of CBRC cemse.kaust.edu.sa. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. DeepGO: predicting protein functions from sequence and interactions using a deep ontology-aware classifier - PMC pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Robert Hoehndorf promoted to associate professor at KAUST cemse.kaust.edu.sa. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Protein function prediction as approximate semantic entailment | Nature Machine Intelligence nature.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. AI Unveils Mysteries of Unknown Proteins' Functions - Neuroscience News neurosciencenews.com. Checked 22 October 2026.