A bipartite graph G = (A, B, E) is convex on B if there exists an ordering of the vertices of B such that for any vertex v ∈ A, vertices adjacent to v are consecutive in B. A complete bipartite subgraph of a graph G is called a biclique of G. Motivated by an application to analyzing DNA microarray data, we study the problem of finding maximum edge bicliques in convex bipartite graphs. Given a bipartite graph G = (A, B, E) which is convex on B, we present a new algorithm that computes a maximum edge biclique of G in O(n log 3 n log log n) time and O(n) space, where n = |A|. This improves the current O(n 2 ) time bound available for the problem. We also show that for two special subclasses of convex bipartite graphs, namely 312 Algorithmica (2012) 64:311-325 for biconvex graphs and bipartite permutation graphs, a maximum edge biclique can be computed in O(nα(n)) and O(n) time, respectively, where n = min(|A|, |B|) and α(n) is the slowly growing inverse of the Ackermann function.