HDRUK Oxford Monthly Meetup, Monday 16 June 2025, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Speakers:
1) Professor Aiden Doherty; Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Oxford Population Health, University of Oxford
2) Mr. Charilaos Zisou; Oxford Population Health, University of Oxford

Abstract:
Smartphones and wearable devices provide a major opportunity to transform our understanding of the mechanisms, determinants, and consequences of diseases. For example, around 9 in 10 people own a smartphone in the United Kingdom, while one-fifth of US adults own wearable technologies. This high level of device ownership means that many people could contribute to health research from the comfort of their home by offering small amounts of time to share data and help address health-related questions that matter to them. A leading example is the seven day wrist-worn accelerometer data measured in 100,000 UK Biobank participants between 2013-2015 that has led to important new findings. These include discoveries of: new genetic variants for sleep and activity; small amounts of vigorous non-exercise physical activity being associated with substantially lower mortality; and no apparent upper threshold to the benefits of physical activity with respect to cardiovascular disease risk. However, challenges exist around cost, access, validity, and training. In this talk I will review progress made in this exciting new area of health data science and share opportunities to provide new insights into physical activity, sleep, heart rhythms and other exposures relevant to health and disease.

Short Bios:
1) Professor Doherty is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Oxford. His team of ~20 researchers develop reproducible methods to analyse wearable sensor data in both clinical trials and very large health studies to better understand the causes and consequences of disease. The team has played a key role in the collection of wearable sensor data in over 150,000 research participants across the UK and China as well as complementary open human activity recognition validation datasets to further enhance these resources. His team develops open software tools and data resources for machine learning methods to measure sleep, sedentary behaviour, physical activity behaviours and steps.

2) Mr. Zisou is a DPhil student in Population Health at the University of Oxford, supported by the Oxford British Heart Foundation Centre for Research Excellence, and also a Clarendon scholar. His research focuses on investigating the genetic factors influencing device-measured physical activity and their impact on cardiovascular disease risk. To this end, he leads the work of the ACTIGEN consortium, an international collaboration conducting a meta-analysis of genomic and wearable device data from over 200,000 individuals across diverse populations.

Mode: Hybrid
In-person Venue – Richard Doll Lecture Theatre, Richard Doll Building, Old Road Campus, University of Oxford
To attend online – please register (link below)