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Aiden Doherty

Aiden Doherty

Contact information

Email
aiden.doherty@ndph.ox.ac.uk

Telephone
+44 (0)1865 617794

Colleges

Reuben College

Websites

Wearables Group
Principal Investigator
Big Data Institute
Group Leader
Reuben College
Vice-President
BHF Centre of Research Excellence
Sub-theme Lead for AI in Pathology
Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute

Aiden Doherty

Professor of Biomedical Informatics

Wellcome Senior Research Fellow

Wearable sensors, machine learning, genomics

Aiden is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and a Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Oxford. He has the privilige of leading a team of >20 researchers and believes that it is critical to support junior researchers to develop their own independent careers at the intersection of computing and medicine to tackle the most important scientific questions. To date, he has mentored 15 early career researchers to obtain £8.8M in fellowships from Wellcome, Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation, US National Institute of Health, and the UK National Institute of Health Research. To support training opportunities for the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists, Aiden is Vice-President at Reuben College, Oxford’s 39th and newest graduate interdisciplinary college.

He has been fortunate to play a key role in the UK and China Kadoorie Biobank activity monitoring projects, with accelerometer data collected in ≈150,000 participants. These resources are now used by thousands of researchers worldwide to interrogate a range of scientific questions. His team’s development of self-supervised learning has helped transform physical activity and sleep measurement with our 2024 paper in Nature’s Digital Medicine Journal already receiving >160 citations. Aiden chairs the UK Biobank’s international expert working group on remote monitoring technologies and sits on the scientific advisory boards of the EU-IMI IDEA-FAST wearable sensing project (46 industrial/academic partners across 15 countries) and the €7M EU iPROLEPSIS project on psoriatic arthritis inflammation. In addition, Aiden advises the World Health Organisation on strategies to use wearables in disease surveillance, with reports published in 2024 and 2025.

Awards

2022-27 Wellcome Senior Research Fellowship

2015 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions COFUND Award (only 3 selected from ~9000 EU fellows between ’07-’13)

2015-17 British Heart Foundation Centre for Research Excellence intermediate transition fellowship

2010-13 Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship (E.U. FP7 and Irish Health Research Board)

2005-08 Irish Research Council science PhD scholarship

Recent publications

Sleep and circadian health in the UK Biobank: Report on the 2023 sleep questionnaire enhancement.

Tse KYK. et al, (2026), Sleep

Reproducibility and associated regression dilution bias of accelerometer-derived physical activity and sleep in UK Biobank.

Zisou C. et al, (2026), Int J Epidemiol, 55

Establishing global standards on wearable technology for measuring mobility in ageing populations: an international consensus exercise.

Beauchamp MK. et al, (2026), Age Ageing, 55

Daily Steps as a Public Health Metric for Physical Activity Monitoring and Promotion.

Paluch AE. et al, (2026), Exerc Sport Sci Rev, 54, 15 - 25

Generation of a Free-Living Ground-Truth Validation Dataset for Wearable Measures of Physical Activity, Sedentary Behavior, Sleep, and Heart Rate in Adults (OxWEARS): Protocol for a Cross-Sectional Study.

Maylor BD. et al, (2025), JMIR Res Protoc, 14

Characterising Parkinson's Disease-like Walking Using Wrist-worn Accelerometers

Acquah A. et al, (2025), Ubicomp Companion 2025 Companion of the 2025 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, 50 - 54

UK Biobank at 20 years old: a growing, global resource for dementia research

ALLEN N. et al, (2025), Nature Reviews Neurology

The active cohort: a population-based smartphone intervention for health outcomes.

Senderey AB. et al, (2025), J Public Health (Oxf), 47, 765 - 772

Daily steps are a predictor of, but perhaps not a risk factor for Parkinson's disease: findings from the UK Biobank.

Acquah A. et al, (2025), NPJ Parkinsons Dis, 11

Heart Rate Profiles During Exercise and Incident Parkinson's Disease.

van Duijvenboden S. et al, (2025), Ann Neurol, 98, 1004 - 1013

Reducing annotation burden in physical activity research using vision language models.

Schönfeldt A. et al, (2025), Sci Rep, 15

Association of Daily Steps with Incident Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Evidence from the UK Biobank Cohort.

Fulda ES. et al, (2025), Med Sci Sports Exerc, 57, 1905 - 1913

Joint associations of device-measured physical activity and sleep duration with incident major adverse cardiovascular events: prospective analysis of the UK Biobank

Brocklebank L. et al, (2025)

Comparing two wrist-worn accelerometers (Axivity AX3 and Matrix 003) for measuring movement behaviours in British and Chinese older adults

Brocklebank LAURA., (2025), Journal for the Measurement of Physical Behaviour

Amount and intensity of daily total physical activity, step count and risk of incident cancer in the UK Biobank.

Shreves AH. et al, (2025), Br J Sports Med, 59, 839 - 847

Predictive performance of wearable sensors for mortality risk in older adults: a model development and validation study.

Harper C. et al, (2025)

Integrating the environmental and genetic architectures of aging and mortality.

Argentieri MA. et al, (2025), Nat Med, 31, 1016 - 1025

Passive sensing at scale to transform understanding of poor mental health.

Doherty A. et al, (2025), Lancet Digit Health, 7, e172 - e174

Digital health technologies to strengthen patient-centred outcome assessment in clinical trials in inflammatory arthritis.

McGagh D. et al, (2025), Lancet Rheumatol, 7, e55 - e63

Performance evaluation of algorithms to estimate daily sedentary time using wrist-worn sensors in free-living adults.

Matthews CE. et al, (2025), J Meas Phys Behav, 8

Sleep and circadian health in the UK Biobank: Report on the 2023 sleep questionnaire enhancement

Tse K. et al, (2025)

Joint association of genetic risk and accelerometer-based step count with cardiovascular disease: a UK-Biobank cohort study

Birmpili P. et al, (2025)

24-hour Physical Activity, Sedentary, and Sleep Profiles in Individuals with Cancer: A UK Biobank Cohort Study

Le F. et al, (2025)

Reproducibility and associated regression dilution bias of accelerometer-derived physical activity and sleep in the UK Biobank

Zisou C. et al, (2025)

Associations of accelerometer-measured physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep with next-day cognitive performance in older adults: a micro-longitudinal study.

Bloomberg M. et al, (2024), Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 21

Corrigendum to "Modelling personal temperature exposure using household and outdoor temperature and questionnaire data: Implications for epidemiological studies" [Environ. Inter. 192 (2024) 109060].

Xia X. et al, (2024), Environ Int, 194

Optimal Instruments for Measurement of Dietary Intake, Physical Activity, and Sleep Among Adults in Population-Based Studies: Report of a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Workshop.

Anaya G. et al, (2024), J Am Heart Assoc, 13

CAPTURE-24: A large dataset of wrist-worn activity tracker data collected in the wild for human activity recognition.

Chan S. et al, (2024), Sci Data, 11

Modelling personal temperature exposure using household and outdoor temperature and questionnaire data: Implications for epidemiological studies.

Xia X. et al, (2024), Environ Int, 192

Self-Supervised Machine Learning to Characterize Step Counts from Wrist-Worn Accelerometers in the UK Biobank.

Small SR. et al, (2024), Med Sci Sports Exerc, 56, 1945 - 1953

A systematic review of the performance of actigraphy in measuring sleep stages.

Yuan H. et al, (2024), J Sleep Res, 33

Daily steps are a predictor of, but perhaps not a modifiable risk factor for Parkinson's Disease: findings from the UK Biobank.

Acquah A. et al, (2024)

Response by Lambiase and van Duijvenboden to Letter Regarding Article, "Prognostic Significance of Different Ventricular Ectopic Burdens During Submaximal Exercise in Asymptomatic UK Biobank Subjects".

Lambiase PD. and van Duijvenboden S., (2024), Circulation, 150

Author Correction: Self-supervised learning of accelerometer data provides new insights for sleep and its association with mortality.

Yuan H. et al, (2024), NPJ Digit Med, 7

Self-supervised learning of accelerometer data provides new insights for sleep and its association with mortality.

Yuan H. et al, (2024), NPJ Digit Med, 7

Device-Measured Physical Activity in 3506 Individuals with Knee or Hip Arthroplasty.

Small SR. et al, (2024), Med Sci Sports Exerc, 56, 805 - 812

Correction: Device-measured movement behaviours in over 20,000 China Kadoorie Biobank participants.

Chen Y. et al, (2024), Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 21

Self-supervised learning for human activity recognition using 700,000 person-days of wearable data.

Yuan H. et al, (2024), NPJ Digit Med, 7

Digital health technologies and machine learning augment patient reported outcomes to remotely characterise rheumatoid arthritis.

Creagh AP. et al, (2024), NPJ Digit Med, 7

[Progress and practice of objective measurement of physical behaviors in large-scale cohort research].

Chen YY. et al, (2024), Zhonghua Liu Xing Bing Xue Za Zhi, 45, 35 - 40

Feasibility and usability of remote monitoring in Alzheimer's disease.

Muurling M. et al, (2024), Digit Health, 10

Association of daily steps with incident non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: Evidence from the UK Biobank cohort

Fulda E. et al, (2024)

DEVICE-MEASURED MOVEMENT BEHAVIORS IN A NATIONALLY REPRESENTATIVE COHORT OF OLDER ENGLISH ADULTS

Brocklebank L. et al, (2024), INNOVATION IN AGING, 8, 361 - 361

Characterising personal, household, and community PM2.5 exposure in one urban and two rural communities in China.

Chan KH. et al, (2023), Sci Total Environ, 904

Prognostic Significance of Different Ventricular Ectopic Burdens During Submaximal Exercise in Asymptomatic UK Biobank Subjects.

van Duijvenboden S. et al, (2023), Circulation, 148, 1932 - 1944

Amount and intensity of physical activity and risk of incident cancer in the UK Biobank.

Shreves AH. et al, (2023)

Device-measured movement behaviours in over 20,000 China Kadoorie Biobank participants.

Chen Y. et al, (2023), Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 20

Dose-response of accelerometer-measured physical activity, step count, and cancer risk in the UK Biobank: a prospective cohort analysis.

Shreves AH. et al, (2023), Lancet, 402 Suppl 1

Brief bouts of device-measured intermittent lifestyle physical activity and its association with major adverse cardiovascular events and mortality in people who do not exercise: a prospective cohort study.

Ahmadi MN. et al, (2023), Lancet Public Health, 8, e800 - e810

Potential impact of wearables on physical activity guidelines and interventions: opportunities and challenges.

Gill JM. et al, (2023), Br J Sports Med, 57, 1223 - 1225

Self-supervised learning of accelerometer data provides new insights for sleep and its association with mortality.

Yuan H. et al, (2023)

Integrating at-scale health data into doctoral training (Preprint)

Nichols TE. et al, (2023)

The impact of selected methodological factors on data collection outcomes in observational studies of device-measured physical behaviour in adults: A systematic review.

Pulsford RM. et al, (2023), Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 20

Development and Validation of a Machine Learning Wrist-worn Step Detection Algorithm with Deployment in the UK Biobank.

Small SR. et al, (2023)

Charting a Course for Smartphones and Wearables to Transform Population Health Research.

Dixon WG. et al, (2023), J Med Internet Res, 25

Association of Accelerometer-Measured Physical Activity Level With Risks of Hospitalization for 25 Common Health Conditions in UK Adults.

Watts EL. et al, (2023), JAMA Netw Open, 6

Level of accelerometer-measured physical activity and risks of hospitalization for 25 common health conditions in UK adults

DOHERTY A. et al, (2023), JAMA Network Open

Integrating the environmental and genetic architectures of mortality and aging

Argentieri A. et al, (2023)

Device-Measured Physical Activity in 3,511 Individuals with Knee or Hip Arthroplasty

Small S. et al, (2023)

Characterising personal, household, and community PM2.5 exposure in one urban and two rural communities in China

Chan KH. et al, (2023)

More publications