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Michelle Morris

Michelle Morris

Profile

Michelle is an interdisciplinary researcher with a background spanning: health informatics, geography, nutritional epidemiology and health economics. Michelle is a University of Leeds University Academic Fellow in Health Data Analytics and a Turing Fellow.

Graduating with a Neuroscience degree in 2002, she began a career in health informatics, working in a graduate position at EMIS, one of the UK's leading healthcare clinical system providers, where she gained international project management experience. She returned to study for a MSc, equipping her in statistics and epidemiology training (2009) and completed an interdisciplinary PhD investigating 'Spatial analysis of dietary cost patterns and implications for health' (2013), followed by postdoctoral positions in both nutritional epidemiology and consumer data research.

Currently, she directs the multidisciplinary ESRC Strategic Network for Obesity and has developed a diverse teaching portfolio, including spatial analytics and visualisation for health. With this unique career history she is well placed to achieve her vision to cross discipline boundaries bringing together people, data and methods to improve health through informatics - specifically combining consumer analytics with health informatics and using 'big data' to benefit patient outcomes.

Research interests

Michelle's primary research interests are in spatial and social variations in diet, lifestyle and health and how new and emerging forms of data can be best utilised to understand these. She leads a team focused on the use of new forms of 'big' and spatial data in health research, working closely with industry partners on food and activity data.

Qualifications

  • PhD Spatial analysis of dietary cost patterns and implications for health
  • MSc Nutrition Obesity and Health
  • BSc Neuroscience

Professional memberships

  • Society for Social Medicine
  • Association for Study of Obesity

Research groups and institutes

  • Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's

Current postgraduate researchers

<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://phd.leeds.ac.uk">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>