Data Science · Digital Health · Tech & AI

Turning data
into decisions & products.

I'm Dr Sagar Jilka, a PhD neuroscientist and data scientist. Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick, consultant across industry & healthcare, and founder of SmartPaper.

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Machine LearningDigital HealthNeuroimagingNLPPythonDigital PhenotypingReact NativeApplied AI Machine LearningDigital HealthNeuroimagingNLPPythonDigital PhenotypingReact NativeApplied AI
01 - Background

Research, data, and a habit of building.

I'm an Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick, Warwick Medical School, and Digital Health & AI Theme Co-Lead at the Warwick Centre for Global Health. I work at the intersection of data science, digital health, global health and cognitive neuroscience.

My PhD, completed jointly at Imperial College London and Goldsmiths, was in Neuroscience, building on an MRes in Brain Imaging from Birmingham and a dual-honours BSc in Psychology & Music from Keele.

I've worked across King's College London, the Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, and as a Football Data Scientist at a London tech startup. I teach data science and Python from an applied industry perspective, and outside academia I build digital products, most recently SmartPaper.

PhD NeuroscienceMachine LearningDigital PhenotypingNLPPythonNeuroimagingReact NativeApplied AI
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years across academia, industry & startups
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universities: Warwick, King's College, Imperial
2015
Scopus Young Researcher UK Award, for research impact
02 - Experience

From brain imaging to AI products.

A career built across research, data science, and digital health.

2021 - PRESENT
Assistant Professor
University of Warwick Medical School
Mental Health & Wellbeing Unit, Division of Health Sciences. Research on digital phenotyping, smartphone-based interventions, and machine learning for mental-health outcomes. Also Digital Health & AI Theme Co-Lead at the Warwick Centre for Global Health.
2017 - 2021
PPI Coordinator & Research Associate
Maudsley BRC · King's College London
Patient and Public Involvement in psychiatric research. Developed NLP approaches to understand patient perspectives on ketamine as a treatment for depression.
2015 - 2018
Research Associate
Imperial College London · Division of Surgery
Applied machine learning to healthcare data. Won the Scopus Young Researcher UK Award (Arts & Humanities) in 2015 for research impact.
ALONGSIDE ACADEMIA
Football Data Scientist
London Tech Startup
Applied statistical modelling and data science to sports-performance data.
ONGOING
Data Science & Analytics Consultant
Independent
Consulting across industry and healthcare on data strategy, ML pipelines, and digital-product development, and teaching PhD students Python from an industry perspective.
03 - Building

Research thinking, applied to real products.

Featured · Live on the App Store

📄 SmartPaper

An AI-powered practice-paper app for UK primary children (Reception to Year 6). Adaptive papers, interactive question types, step-by-step AI feedback, and a Bayesian progress score visualised as line & radar charts. Built with React Native, Supabase and Claude AI.

Explore SmartPaper
Research

🧠 Digital Phenotyping

Using smartphone sensors and passive data collection to understand mental health at scale. Published in Nature Communications Medicine (2025).

View publications
Applied AI

🤖 AI for Mental-Health Stigma

Machine-learning & NLP algorithms to identify and analyse mental-health stigma across social-media platforms at scale.

Read the research
04 - Research

Selected publications.

Peer-reviewed work across digital health, neuroscience, and AI.

Full publication list on Google Scholar →

05 - Get in touch

Let's build something measurable.

Open to research collaborations, consulting enquiries, and conversations about digital health and AI.