Mentors

An overview of SMARTbiomed collaborators and mentors:


Esben Agerbo: Professor of psychiatric and genetic epidemiology; Head of Research at the National Centre for Register-based Research, Aarhus University. Expertise: statistical methods in epidemiology and genetics. 

Anders Albrechtsen: Professor of bioinformatics, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: statistical and computational methods for analysis of genomic data.  

Michael Benros: Professor of psychiatry, University of Copenhagen; Head of Copenhagen Research Centre for Biological and Precision Psychiatry at Mental Health Centre Copenhagen, Copenhagen University Hospital. Expertise: Immuno-Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, Epidemiology, genetics, clinical studies and Precision Psychiatry. 

Anders Børglum: Professor of medical genetics; Chair of Personalized Medicine Research, Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University; Director of Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine, Leader of Aarhus Genome-data Center;  Chair of the Personalized Medicine Network, AU;  Co-PI and the first Scientific Director of iPSYCH. Expertise: statistical and molecular genetics in psychiatry.

Hans Erik Boetker: Cardiologist and Professor,  Faculty of Health, Aarhus University. Expertise: heart disease aetiology. 

Heather Boyd: Senior Researcher and Group Leader, Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institut. Expertise: Epidemiology and molecular signatures of pregnancy complications (particularly preeclampsia) and associated cardiometabolic, renal and neurological disease.

Søren Brunak: Professor and Head of Research, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: computational strategies for analysis of biomedical data for use in molecular biology, medicine and biotechnology.

Barbara Casadei: British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Oxford; Cardiovascular Lead of the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, Past President of the European Society of Cardiology.  Expertise: cellular triggers and substrates of common cardiovascular diseases, such as heart failure and atrial fibrillation.

Jakob Christensen: Clinical Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and the Department of Neurology, Aarhus University Hospital; chair of the Danish Epilepsy Society and the chair of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) Epidemiology Commission.  Expertise: neurology, genetics and epidemiology.

Melina Claussnitzer: Institute member, Broad Institute; Assistant professor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School (HMS); Co-director Type 2 Diabetes Systems Genomics Initiative at the Broad; Associate director of scientific strategy for the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Genomic Mechanisms of Disease at the Broad. Expertise: Type 2 Diabetes, cell-based models, variant-to-function.

Jim Davies: Professor of software engineering, Department of Computer Science; Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Health Data Science, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford. Expertise: model- and metadata-driven techniques for big data engineering: techniques that support the automatic generation and configuration of software, and the automatic management and processing of data.

John Davis: Chief Scientific Officer at the ​​Oxford Drug Discovery Institute, University of Oxford. Expertise: new drug treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

Aiden Doherty: Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and Professor of biomedical informatics, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford. Expertise: reproducible methods to analyse wearable sensor time-series data in very large health studies to better understand the causes and consequences of disease. 

Julie Werenberg Dreier: Senior Researcher, National Centre for Register-based Research, Aarhus University; Chair of the Danish Epidemiology Society. Expertise: register-based research, neuroepidemiology (particularly epilepsy, febrile seizures and neurodevelopmental disorders) and data infrastructure.

Cornelia van Duijn: Professor of epidemiology, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Expertise: large omics studies of Alzhiemer’s, Parkinson’s and CJD.

Claus Thorn Ekstrøm: Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Copenhagen with primary research interests within the fields of bioinformatics, statistical genetics, and genetic epidemiology. 

Robin Evans: Professor University of Oxford. Expertise: theoretical and methodological causal inference; he also has applied papers in Psychiatry and Social Policy.

Bjarke Feenstra: Senior Scientist and Group Leader, Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen;  Research Group Leader, Copenhagen University Hospital Biobank Unit. Expertise: genetic epidemiology with a focus on pregnancy-related outcomes and selected childhood diseases (e.g. febrile seizures).

Thomas Gerds: Professor of biostatistics, Section of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen. Expertise: statistical methods for medical risk prediction models and longitudinal causal inference with time-to-event outcomes.

Marta Guasch-Ferré: Associate Professor, Department of Public Health and Novo Nordisk Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Nutrition, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, US.  Expertise: Nutrition, epidemiology, metabolomics, and cardiometabolic diseases (type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease). 

Ingrid Granne: Associate Professor, Nuffield Women’s and Reproductive Health Department, University of Oxford. Expertise: infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss and its consequences for health.

Niels Richard Hansen: Professor of computational statistics, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen; Head of the Section of Statistics and Probability Theory and the cofounder of Copenhagen Causality Lab. Expertise: Causal inference and causal discovery at the intersection of AI and statistics. Dynamical causal models.

Torben Hansen: Professor of metabolic genetics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Expertise:  interactions between the human host and the human global microbiome and its impact on health and disease.

Thomas Folkmann Hansen: Associate Professor and research leader NeuroGenomic group, Danish Headache Centre & Translational Research Centre, Copenhagen University Hospital; Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: NeuroGenomic; temporal multi-omic analyse, and translational research of neurological disorders. 

Chris Hinds: Robertson Foundation Fellowship in digital phenotyping, University of Oxford. Expertise: novel digital phenotyping approaches and how these technologies can be used to create new kinds of eCohorts.

Heidi Johansen-Berg: Professor of cognitive neuroscience; Director of the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN), University of Oxford. Expertise: brain imaging research on brain plasticity, lifespan changes, and recovery of function, and implications for understanding and treating brain disorders. 

Maria Kaisar: Department of transplantation science, University of Oxford. Vice Chair of Basic Science, European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT);  Councillor for Transplant Science, British Transplant Society (BTS); Principal Investigator of a Kidney Research UK funded project on Assessing Donor Kidneys and Monitoring Transplant Recipients (ADMIRE). Expertise: multi-omics and computational approaches to develop better tools of donor organ assessment.

Andrey Kormilitzin: Senior Researcher, Department of Psychiatry & Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Expertise: Time-series and mathematics of complex data streams; applications of statistical machine learning and neural networks in neuroscience and psychiatry; developing deployable technology for clinical decision support.

Anders Krogh: Professor of bioinformatics, Department of Computer Science and Head of Health Data Science Center, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: bioinformatics and machine learning theory and applications, in particular hidden Markov models and Neural Networks.

Kasper Lage: Associate Professor, Harvard; Director of Bioinformatics at Mass General Hospital Dept of Surgery; Managing Director of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Genomic Mechanisms of Disease, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Expertise: cross-disciplinary research bringing together computational biologists, geneticists, stem cell and proteomics experts aiming to understand the cellular processes perturbed by genetics

Theis Lange: Head of Department and Professor at the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: interests in causal inference and mediation, statistical analysis of clinical trials, and non-linear dynamic models.

Belinda Lennox: Professor of psychiatry and Head of Department, University of Oxford; Expertise: psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Ruth Loos: Director of the Genetics of Obesity and Related Metabolic Traits Program, Charles R. Bronfman Institute of Personalized Medicine; Vice Executive Director at Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: Obesity genomics

Torben Martinussen: Professor, Section of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: survival analysis and causal inference for survival outcomes.

Jordi Merino: Associate Professor and Group Leader at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Adjunct Research Scientist, Diabetes Unit and Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. Expertise: Genetics of diabetes and glycemic traits, GxE, polygenic scores, precision diabetes medicine

Ida Moltke: Associate Professor, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: statistical and computational methods for genomic data to solve problems in both population and medical genetics.

Eva Morris: Professor of Health Data Epidemiology, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, Expertise: health data research, particularly using national cancer datasets.

Thomas Nichols: Professor of neuroimaging statistics, Nuffield Department of Population Health; co-Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Health Data Science, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford. Expertise: modelling and inference methods for brain imaging research.

George Nicholson: Senior researcher at the Department of Statistics and Big Data Institute, University of Oxford. Expertise: Bayesian modelling and machine learning in statistical genetics and multi-modal longitudinal health data.

Henriette Svarre Nielsen: Professor in obstetrics and gynaecology, University of Copenhagen; consultant at Hvidovre Hospital with clinical duties in the fertility clinic; Head, recurrent pregnancy loss unit. Expertise: infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss and its consequences for health.

Mette Nyegaard: Head of Department, Congenital Disorders, Statens Serum Institute, Copenhagen; Professor of Personalised Medicine at the Department of Health Science and Technology, Aalborg University, Expertise: genetics and precision medicine. 

Brice Ozenne: Associate Professor of Biostatistics, Section of Biostatistics in the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: statistical methods for analysing repeated measurements or multivariate outcomes (mixed models, latent variable models, generalized pairwise comparisons).  

Bartek Papiez: Associate Professor at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford. Expertise: Medical image analysis, machine learning for the theoretical foundations of image analysis algorithms, and applied AI/ML for longitudinal disease monitoring (using imaging, patient records, and Natural Language Processing for cancer, CVD, musculoskeletal diseases).

Carsten Bøtker Pedersen: Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the National Centre for Register-based Research, Aarhus University and principal investigator for the Big Data Centre for Environment and Health. Expertise: environmental and genetic risk factors for psychiatric disorders. 

Tune H. Pers: Associate Professor; Group Leader at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research Copenhagen; affiliated with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Genomic Mechanisms of Disease, Broad Institute. Expertise: computational biology, obesity and type 2 diabetes genetics, and neuroendocrinology. 

Anne Helby PetersenAssitant professor of Biostatistics at the University of Copenhagen with research that focuses on the challenges associated with causal inference using observational data and, in particular, causal discovery.

Wouter Peyrot: Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor in Statistical & Psychiatric Genetics, Department of Psychiatry of Amsterdam UMC, The Netherlands. Expertise: method development, with a specific focus on psychiatric disorders. 

Florian Privé: Senior Researcher, National Centre for Register-based Research, Aarhus University. Expertise: statistical genetics and machine learning and software. 

Simon Rasmussen: Professor; Group Leader, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Copenhagen; affiliated with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Genomic Mechanisms of Disease, Broad Institute. Expertise: multi-modal data integration using machine and deep learning methods for studying genetics and risk prediction. 

Jens Rittscher: Professor of engineering science, Department of Engineering Science; Nuffield Department of Medicine; co-Director of the CDT focusing partner relations, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford. Expertise: algorithms and methods that enable the quantification of a broad range of phenotypic alterations, the precise localisation of signalling events, and the ability to correlate such events in the context of the biological specimens.

Stephen Roberts: Professor of machine learning, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford. Expertise: Applied Machine Learning, Bayesian ML, time series modelling and dynamical systems. 

Blanca Rodriguez: Professor of computational medicine in Oxford; Head of Computational Biology and Health Informatics theme, Department of Computer Science, Oxford. Expertise: digital twins combining computational modelling and simulation and machine learning to investigate cardiometabolic disease and response to therapies through in silico trials for therapy evaluation.

Helene Rytgaard: Associate Professor of biostatistics, Section of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: efficient methods for estimating causal effects in event history settings. 

Michael Sachs: Associate Professor of biostatistics, Section of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen. Expertise: causal symbolic bounds and clinical utility evaluation for risk predictions. 

Mikkel Heide Schierup: Professor of bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Research Centre, Aarhus University, Expertise: statistical and population genetics. 

Andrew Schork: Senior Researcher and Group Leader, Institute of Biological Psychiatry, University of Copenhagen Hospital. Expertise: large-scale genetic analysis of biobanks and registers, including risk estimation, gene-mapping, and genetic-epidemiology.

Arvid Sjölander: Professor of biostatistics, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm Sweden. Expertise: foundational theory in causal inference

Stephen Smith: Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Head of the Analysis Group at Wellcome Centre for Integrated Neuroimaging (WIN), University of Oxford. Expertise: methods for the analysis of functional and structural brain imaging data.

Max Taquet: Clinical lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford; Expertise: Electronic health records, data science, digital phenotyping, clinical psychiatry. 

Yee-Whye Teh: Professor of machine learning, Department of statistics, University of Oxford; research scientist at DeepMind. Expertise: statistical machine learning, with particular focus on probabilistic learning, deep learning, meta learning, Bayesian nonparametrics, variational inference, and Monte Carlo.

Jeremy Tomlinson: Professor of metabolic endocrinology at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine, University of Oxford. Expertise: the role of steroid hormones and their metabolism in the development, assessment and treatment of metabolic diseases including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), obesity and type 2 diabetes. 

Peter Visscher: Professor of quantitative genetics, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Expertise: quantitative genetics methods, risk prediction.

Gunhild Waldemar: Professor of clinical neurology; Chair Danish Dementia Research Centre; Chair Copenhagen Memory Clinic at the Dept. of Neurology, Rigshospitalet. Expertise: dementia epidemiology, global health, diagnostic markers, clinical cohort studies and pharmacological and complex interventions in dementia.

Hugh Watkins: Radcliffe Professor of medicine, University of Oxford. Expertise: molecular genetic analysis of cardiovascular disease as a tool to define disease mechanisms and therapeutic targets.

Ole Winther: Professor in data science and complexity, Section for Cognitive Systems, DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Professor in Genomic bioinformatics at Department of Biology, Bioinformatics, University of Copenhagen and Genomic medicine, Copenhagen University Hospital; Head of the ELLIS Unit Copenhagen and a co-PI of the Machine Learning for Life Science (MLLS) Center. Expertise: Data science and machine learning applied to high dimensional biological data.

Mike Wooldridge: Professor of computer science, University of Oxford; Turing AI World Leading Researcher Fellow. Expertise: computational theory to understand human cognition

Christopher Yau: Professor of artificial intelligence, Big Data Institute, Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health and the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. Turing Fellow.  Expertise: analysis of data from single-cell experiments.

Zhihong Zhu: Senior researcher, National Centre for Register-based Research, Aarhus University. Expertise: statistical genetics, software

Krina Zondervan: Professor of reproductive and genomic epidemiology; Head of the Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health, University of Oxford; Co-Director of the Oxford Endometriosis CaRe Centre; Honorary Skou Professor at the Aarhus University. Expertise: genetic, molecular, and environmental epidemiology applied to women’s health; in particular, endometriosis, including its causes and potential treatments.




The Pioneer Centre
for SMARTbiomed


SMARTbiomed will provide a forum to connect researchers who focus on statistical and computational method development applied to common complex diseases.



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