I'm Matthias Blum.
I am a software project leader at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), near Cambridge (UK), where I am responsible for the development, production, and release of the InterPro and Pfam projects.
In non-technical terms, my role involves creating and maintaining tools that help scientists understand proteins by classifying them into families. These resources allow researchers to decipher protein functions, trace evolutionary relationships, and even predict the behavior of unknown proteins. Managing these projects means ensuring that the software runs reliably and efficiently so that the biological insights it provides can be trusted and widely used.
- Blum M, Hobbs E, Florentino LC, Bateman A. InterProScan 6: a modern large-scale protein function annotation pipeline. Bioinform Advances. 2026 May 21;6(1):vbag141. 10.1093/bioadv/vbag141
- Blum M, Andreeva A, Florentino LC, et al. InterPro: the protein sequence classification resource in 2025. Nucleic Acids Research. 2025 Jan;53(D1):D444-D456. 10.1093/nar/gkae1082
- Paysan-Lafosse T, Andreeva A, Blum M, et al. The Pfam protein families database: embracing AI/ML. Nucleic Acids Research. 2025 Jan;53(D1):D523-D534. 10.1093/nar/gkae997
- Blum M, Cholley PE, Malysheva V, et al. A comprehensive resource for retrieving, visualizing, and integrating functional genomics data. Life Science Alliance. 2020 Jan;3(1):e201900546. 10.26508/lsa.201900546
- Vejnar CE, Blum M, Zdobnov EM. miRmap web: Comprehensive microRNA target prediction online. Nucleic Acids Research. 2013 Jul;41:W165-8. 10.1093/nar/gkt430