The ESMO Congress is Europe’s largest and most prestigious cancer meeting, bringing together more than 33,000 clinicians, scientists, and industry experts.
Michael’s research focuses on the use of supercomputing to design next-generation cancer vaccines. His study assessed neoantigen prediction in glioma, comparing the performance of leading computational tools across large-scale datasets to identify shared vaccine targets in brain tumours. The work was recognised for its methodological innovation and potential to inform new immunotherapy strategies in neuro-oncology.
The study forms part of the UK Cancer Vaccine AI & Supercomputer Project, which aims to accelerate the development of cancer vaccines through the use of sovereign AI infrastructure. The initiative, led by teams at the University of Oxford with infrastructure leadership from The University of Cambridge, represents one of the UK’s flagship efforts to combine computational and translational oncology.
Reflecting on the award, Michael said:
“I’m honoured to receive this recognition from the ESMO Scientific Committee. Working on cancer vaccine design has been an incredible journey, and this award reflects the mentorship, collaboration, and belief that rigorous science can make a difference for patients.”
Dr Lennard Lee, Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Medicine and co-lead of the project, praised the recognition.
“This is a wonderful achievement. Michael's work in brain tumours brings together immuno-oncology, sovereign AI, and translational science to advance vaccine development for a hard-to-treat disease. It is inspiring to see our students making breakthroughs with clear clinical potential. We are grateful for resourcing from Cancer Research UK, Department for Science Innovation and Technology, Cambridge University’s DAWN team and UKRI.”
Michael is leading on the design of a foundation model for cancer immunotherapy and has contributed to the development of the UK’s first generative model trained on more than 12,000 tumour samples. His recognition at ESMO highlights the strength of collaboration across the UK’s cancer research community and the growing role of AI-driven science in advancing cancer vaccine design.
Visit our study pages to find out more about the CRUK Oxford Centre's DPhil in Cancer Science Programme.
