Meet the team¶
Dan Joyce
Professor of Connected Mental Health
Research interests:
- Psychiatry
- Data science and computational methods
- Digital mental health
About:
After training as a computer scientist, I worked in computational modelling of language followed by a spell in experimental cognitive science and psychophysics. After retraining in medicine, I completed core and higher training in psychiatry as an NIHR academic clinical fellow, then lecturer. I'm primarily interested in how rational applications of computational methods (including contemporary ML and AI) can improve how we understand and treat mental illness.
Featured outputs:
- Explainable artificial intelligence for mental health through transparency and interpretability for understandability
- Model development for bespoke large language models for digital triage assistance in mental health care
- Realising stratified psychiatry using multidimensional signatures and trajectories
Yi Dong
Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence
Research interests:
- Trustworthy AI
- Autonomous Systems
- Distributed Optimisation and Control
About:
I am an Early Career Academic and Lecturer at the University of Liverpool with expertise in trustworthy AI. My research interests include AI, Robotics, trustworthy systems, and energy systems. I have secured multiple research grants from UKRI, Innovate UK, ATI, Royal Society, and have contributed to projects totalling over £20M (e.g. EnnCORE, FOCETA, RobustifAI). Our team won the UK-US privacy-enhancing technologies prize challenges with the recognition of Novel Modelling/Design in 2023. I have authored 30+ publications in top-tier venues, such as ICML, ICCV, AAMAS, etc. I also serve as an Area Chair, PC member or Organising team member for conferences including NeurIPS, AAAI, ECAI, and UKAIRS.
Featured outputs:
Peiyun Hu
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Research interests:
- Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and antipsychotic medications
- Real-world data / electronic health records (EHR)
- Predictive modelling and statistical methods
About:
I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Primary Care and Mental Health at the Department of Institute of Population Health, with a PhD in Statistics from the Department of Mathematics, University of York. My current research focuses on analysing large-scale longitudinal electronic health records to investigate CVD risk among individuals treated with antipsychotic medications.
My research interests lie in statistical methodologies for big data and predictive modelling. I am deepening my expertise in areas such as survival analysis, causal inference, and joint modelling. My academic background spans mathematical statistics, computational modelling, and health data science, and I am passionate about contributing to collaborative research at the intersection of clinical epidemiology and data analytics.
I am currently working on the PreCAP project, which uses linked CPRD primary and secondary care data to model cardiovascular risk in individuals prescribed antipsychotic medication.
Yu Fu
Senior Lecturer
Research interests:
- Mental-physical MLTCs
- Mental health safe prescribing
- Health inequalities
About:
I am a Senior Lecturer and NIHR Advanced Fellow with clinical and academic backgrounds in medicine, public health and applied health research. My work focuses on physical–mental multimorbidity, leading research that benefits patients and families. I have extensive experience across multiple long-term conditions in mental health, primary care and community settings, using real-world evaluation to develop, refine and implement complex interventions that inform practice and policy. I draw on diverse methodologies and have delivered systematic reviews, natural and quasi-experimental studies with electronic health records, qualitative research and clinical trials funded by prestigious bodies. I currently sit on the NIHR RfPB funding committee and am a member of the NIHR Statistics Group Routine Data section, Methodology and Mental Health Research Incubators.
Featured outputs:
- Impact of pandemics on primary care: changes in general practitioner antidepressant prescriptions and mental health referrals during lockdowns in England, UK
- Cardiovascular-related conditions and risk factors in primary care for deprived communities before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: an observational study in Northern England
- 'Flattened, fattened, and forgotten': the 'dis-integrated' care of patients prescribed antipsychotics in the UK
Sam Osian
PhD Student in Health Data Science
Research interests:
- Natural language processing
- Coronial data
- Suicide prevention
About:
I am a PhD student working at the intersection of open data, open source technology, and suicide prevention. My current research interest centres on how data from coroners’ inquests can be used to identify and respond to preventable deaths more effectively. I'm particularly interested in how advances in large language models are opening up new possibilities for analysing text at a scale and depth that simply wasn’t possible before.