My research

I am a psychiatric genetic epidemiologist, interested in understanding and preventing mental illness. My research is highly interdisciplinary, combining methodologies from behaviour genetics, epidemiology and longitudinal modelling. Currently, my research focus has three core areas:

1. Longitudinal modelling of mental illness over the life-course: applying novel modelling techniques to better understand how mental health develops with age.
2. Leveraging genetic data to better understand the development of mental illness: using Mendelian randomisation to identify risk factors for mental illness and comparing transmitted and non-transmitted genetic variants to understand the intergenerational transmission of mental illness from parents to children.
3. Identifying predictors of mental illness progression: combining longitudinal modelling of mental illness with genetic causal inference techniques to find robust predictors of favourable outcomes for those with mental illness.

IAS fellowship

One way to improve causal inference is to triangulate findings from multiple different research designs, each with different sources of bias. During our IAS fellowship, we will be thinking about the best ways to design triangulation studies for mental health research, and how to reach stronger causal conclusions for these complex phenotypes.