Following this, he completed a PhD at The Turing Institute at the University of Strathclyde in 1989[1] for work on developing machine learning methods for protein structure prediction.

[7] King's research interests are in the automation of science, drug design, AI, machine learning and synthetic biology.

King's research has been funded by the EPSRC[24] and the BBSRC.,[18] European Union, HEFCW, the Royal Academy of Engineering and JISC.

[25] In 2000 King was a founder of the spin-out company PharmaDM,[26] which developed data mining tools for the pharmaceutical industry.

King has also developed an algorithm for converting protein coding DNA sequences into music with Colin Angus of The Shamen.