About SMARTbiomed 

The Pioneer Centre for SMARTbiomed (Statistical and computational Methods for Advanced Research to Transform biomedicine) is funded by a consortium of Danish foundations supporting research collaboration between researchers at Danish universities/institutes and the University of Oxford. SMARTbiomed is anchored at the National Centre for Register Research (NCRR) at Aarhus University and has been funded for 13 years, starting June 2024. SMARTbiomed is led by Naomi Wray from the University of Oxford.

The Pioneer Centre for SMARTbiomed will support a critical mass of researchers who focus on method and software development for analysis of, and inference from, human health-related massive data, advancing applications in medicine. We aim to create a vibrant international community of researchers, both virtually and in-person, providing an exciting environment of collaboration to attract early-career researchers from a wide variety of fields, working as a team towards unified goals.

The core mission of SMARTbiomed is development of statistical and computational methods focussing on causal inference (theme lead: Erin Gabriel), risk prediction (theme lead: Bjarni Vilhjálmsson) and machine learning (theme lead: Chris Holmes). This broad focus is ring-fenced by questions relevant to common complex diseases/disorders (specifically cardiometabolic, brain and reproductive traits), and ring-fenced by big data types that are newly emerging for exploitation (omics, longitudinal – usually electronic health record or biobank – and clinical imaging data). Bridging omics and clinical big data within SMARTbiomed acknowledges a vision that translation of advances from technologies-based research will be facilitated by close integration with, and knowledge of, clinical data.