Principal investigator

Dr Jen Dykxhoorn is a Principal Research Fellow / Associate Professor in psychiatric epidemiology. She is funded by the National Institute of Health and Social Care Research (NIHR) through an Advanced Fellowship. She has also received funding from the NIHR Three Schools Mental Health (2022) and NIHR School for Public Health Research’s “prime-pumping” fund for early-career researchers (2019-2020).

Dr Dykxhoorn completed her PhD (Psychiatric Epidemiology) at UCL in 2019, her MSc (Epidemiology) in 2014 from the University of Ottawa, and her BAH (Health Studies) in 2009 from Queen’s University. She also has a post-graduate certificate in Public Health Leadership from Concordia University College (2013).

Jen has held several roles in research and public health. She worked for three years as the Programme Manager and Senior Research Fellow for the NIHR School for Public Health Research’s Public Mental Health Programme. Jen has held various roles in local, regional, and national public health, including work as an Epidemiologist/Biostatistician for the Public Health Agency of Canada, a Strategic Research and Policy Advisor at the Mental Health Commission of Canada, a health promoter at the Renfrew County Health Unit, and a community developer for Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services.

Research interests

• Social and environmental determinants of mental illnesses, including psychosis, bipolar disorder, and suicide
• Public mental health
• Epidemiological research methods, particularly longitudinal analysis of big data
• Systems modelling and simulation
• Causal inference