I am broadly interested in finding ways to integrate statistical genetic and experimental psychological approaches to understanding the aetiology of disorder development and treatment response. To date, my research has had a two-fold focus. The first is the application of statistical genetic approaches to psychiatric disorders, primarily anxiety, using large genetic datasets such as the UK Biobank. As part of my role as an analytic member of the Psychiatric Genomic Consortium Anxiety workgroup (PGC-ANX) steering committee, I am involved in efforts to gather together genomic samples from studies around the world to maximise power for genetic discovery in anxiety disorder. 

A parallel strand of my research has involved the development and validation of a smartphone application for the administration of a fear conditioning paradigm remotely. This Fear Learning and Anxiety Response (FLARe) app has already been used to administer a fear conditioning paradigm (an experiment that models the development of anxiety and response to exposure-based treatments) to over 2,000 individuals in the TEDS study. This will allow me to investigate the role of genes and the environment on these anxiety relevant processes, and compare these findings with those derived from more traditional statistical genetic investigations.

For a list of my current research outputs please vist my staff profile