Data Analytics Research and Technology in Healthcare
(DARTH group)


DARTH group mission
Ever-increasing healthcare provision demands strain national health systems globally, which struggle to meet patients' needs. There is a growing unmet clinical need to develop accurate, robust, practical decision support tools to facilitate diagnosis, assessment, and symptom monitoring to improve patient health and care.
We are a dynamic research group based at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh working at the interface of engineering, mathematics, informatics, and medicine. We passionately believe we can design and provide effective solutions which will revolutionize contemporary healthcare delivery through capitalizing technology and harnessing data.
We develop and apply signal processing and statistical machine learning algorithms to explore data and decipher complicated concealed statistical relationships. Our algorithms are directly driven by and validated on complicated real-world problems, aiming to facilitate interpretation of the underlying key mechanisms of the modelled system. Our work is inherently multi-disciplinary and we collaborate with industrial partners and researchers worldwide. We tackle challenging problems in healthcare domains from neurodegenerative disorders and mental health, to asthma, cardiovascular disease, and neonatal monitoring.
Currently highlighting

New members join the DARTH group
Finlay Scheib, a Computational Applied Mathematics MSc student, joined the group over the summer to work on his MSc thesis which focuses on wrist-worn actigraphy data processing - see here.
Two PhD students and a post-doctoral researcher will be starting in the new academic year. Details to follow...

Interested students and post-docs to join my group
If you are interested to work with me and decide to contact me, it would be useful if you attach: (1) your CV; (2) transcripts; (3) evidence of independent work, ideally e.g. if you have written an undergraduate/master's thesis; (4) evidence of English ability (if available and English is not your first language). Please explain in brief (a) your background/skillset/extenuating circumstances (where applicable), (b) why you want to work with me, and (c) what you would like to work on (a short proposal). It is unlikely I will respond if you have not put in the effort to provide basic information and documentation.
I get a very large number of emails - if I haven't responded within a week, please resend.

Katherine successfully defended her PhD thesis on 25 March 2026
Katherine has defended her PhD thesis entitled: “Digital health strategies for endometriosis symptom monitoring using wrist-worn wearables and statistical machine learning”. Her examiners, Prof. Rebecca Reynolds (University of Edinburgh) and Prof. Aiden Doherty (University of Oxford), were very complimentary regarding the significance, rigor, and impact of this work which has already resulted in four high quality journal publications. She has very minor corrections pending before this is formally approved.

Thanasis appointed Founding Fellow of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences
The Academy for the Mathematical Sciences, the UK's National Academy for Mathematics made a formal announcement on the milestone of appointing the inaugural cohort of 100 Founding Fellows: "[...] vision to bring together the UK’s strongest mathematical scientists across academia, education, business, industry, and government to help solve some of the UK’s biggest challenges. Included among this inaugural cohort of Fellows are winners of the Fields Medal (the mathematics equivalent of a Nobel Prize), leading business people, distinguished teachers and academics, science communicators, and pioneers of computing and machine learning."

Thanasis inducted to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's National Academy of Sciences, and being elected a Fellow is the equivalent title of 'Academician'.
In 2025, only 44 people were elected to FRSE. Thanasis was elected in the category "Informatics, Mathematics and Statistics", which typically elects only 3-4 Fellows each year.
There was a formal induction ceremony on 16 June 2025 in Edinburgh. [photo credit: Stewart Attwood Photography]
News
16 Jun 2026
12 Jun 2026
5 June 2026
20 May 2026
24 Feb 2026
25 Mar 2026
17 Feb 2026
29 Jan 2026
Journal paper accepted for publication in Molecular Psychiatry
Journal paper accepted for publication in Scientific Reports
Journal paper accepted for publication in Advanced Science
Journal paper accepted for publication in JAMA Network Open
Journal paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the Intensive Care Society
Katherine Edgley defended her PhD thesis! She has very minor corrections pending.
Journal paper published in Lancet Global Health
Thanasis appointed Founding Fellow of the Academy for Mathematical Sciences