Dr Sara Khalil

Biography

Clinician, experimental biologist, computational biologist, and data scientist. 

My interdisciplinary research background allowed me to work with top professors in Japan and USA on identifying theranostic for different diseases.

Currently, my research focus is on translational psychiatry where I combine my experimental and computational, and clinical experience to provide personalized diagnostic and prognostic markers for psychiatric diseases.

My research journey started working as an academic clinician where I conducted qualitative research studies e.g. interviews and focus groups. During this time I gained experience in qualitative data analysis using different software e.g. NVIVO

I joined Dr. Nguyen Tien Huy's lab at Nagasaki University where we worked on developing evidence-based medicine practices. I conducted systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and Bayesian network meta-analyses. I have also developed protocols for clinical trials and supervised team members and helped them understand the different statistical methodologies.

From there my career in data science started where I also worked in industry and with different research groups around the world analyzing health data including clinical, epidemiological, and imaging data using different statistical packages including R and SPSS.

During this time, I got MSc in Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a diploma in  Clinical Microbiology. During my study, I learned different lab techniques e.g. mitochondrial separation, ELISA, in-vivo disease models, protein separation, western blots, RNA extraction, and qPCR.

This three-year MSc study helped me later design my own experiments.  I also used machine learning and deep learning algorithms to combine genetic, neuroimaging, and clinical data to identify different biomarkers for human diseases.

Currently, I am working with researchers at Mayo clinic to develop genetic and MRI markers for adult ADHD. 

My current role at the University of Bradford is to help proper research data management and train the next-generation data stewards. 

Professional activities