Inspired by the creation of PROSITE, Attwood developed a method of protein fingerprinting and used this to establish the PRINTS[11][12][13] database.

With Amos Bairoch she sought to unify work on protein family classification and annotation, eventually jointly securing a European Union grant with Rolf Apweiler to establish InterPro,[14][15] with Pfam, ProDom and Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL as consortium partners in 1997.

[28][29] The group are building re-usable software components to create useful bioinformatics applications through UTOPIA (Bioinformatics tools),[30][31] and are developing new approaches for automatic annotation and text mining, like PRECIS,[32] METIS,[33] BioIE,[34] and semantic approaches to data integration,[35] such as the Semantic Biochemical Journal[36] published by Portland Press.

The UTOPIA tools underpin both the Semantic Biochemical Journal and a collaborative project with Pfizer and AstraZeneca to develop a 21st-century interface to biomedical literature and data management.

[6] Attwood teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate courses and has been doctoral advisor or co-supervisor to several PhD students (e.g., Manuel Corpas).