Justin C Yang
Psychiatric epidemiologist and health data scientist studying mental-health trajectories and inequalities using linked administrative data, electronic health records, longitudinal studies, and causal and computational methods.
I am a Senior Research Fellow in the Division of Psychiatry at University College London and lead MINDSET, an independent research programme spanning severe mental illness, neurodivergence, addiction, and mental-health services.
MINDSET
Multimodal INference and Data Science for Epidemiology and Treatment is the research programme I established and lead at UCL. It is grounded in linked population and clinical data and extends across longitudinal, intensive, environmental, and biological evidence when those sources can answer questions that a single dataset cannot.
Mental health develops through interacting processes within people, their environments, and the institutions they encounter. These operate from moments to lifetimes and across homes, communities, services, and population systems, while research observes them indirectly through measurements produced in different settings and for different purposes.
Inference is the organising idea in MINDSET. I ask what each source reveals or obscures, how measurements were generated and selected, and which combinations of evidence can reduce uncertainty about mechanisms, trajectories, interventions, or inequalities. Psychiatric epidemiology, causal inference, and data science provide the methodological core.
Three enduring questions organise the programme.
What shapes mental health and inequalities over time?
Understanding how conditions and experiences within people, between people, and across the environments and institutions they encounter combine over the life course.
How can heterogeneous evidence support credible inference?
Determining what different measurements can establish, and how evidence can be linked or triangulated across levels, settings, and timescales while remaining explicit about selection, measurement, missingness, and uncertainty.
What evidence systems make rigorous and useful inference possible?
Improving the infrastructures, governance, and analytical practices that enable sensitive human data to support research, services, policy, and public decision-making.
A connected research agenda
I develop MINDSET through time-bounded studies that approach the same questions across different settings, levels, and timescales. WISDOM examines mental-health trajectories and inequalities using longitudinal evidence, while HOPE-SEN used linked health and education data to investigate inequalities among neurodivergent children and young people. Through the UKRI Mental Health Platform, WISDOM also connects perspectives on severe mental illness across the Platform’s hubs. UNITED and a new anti-stigma intervention process evaluation extend the agenda into addiction treatment, professional practice, and service improvement. Work with the North London NHS Foundation Trust Research Database turns methodological and substantive lessons into better governed research infrastructure.
The relationship runs in both directions: substantive questions reveal limitations in existing data; methodological work clarifies what can credibly be inferred; and infrastructure work improves the evidence available for the next study. Individual awards start and finish, but this cycle provides continuity across the wider programme.
Teaching and supervision
Alongside research, I teach epidemiology, statistics, and research methods across postgraduate mental-health programmes at UCL, supervise doctoral and taught postgraduate research, and teach open and reproducible data-science skills as a certified Carpentries instructor. See Teaching & Supervision for current teaching and trainees.
Collaboration
Collaboration is integral to MINDSET. I work with researchers, health and public-sector organisations, services, charities, people with lived experience, and trainees when complementary expertise or evidence can improve the work. I welcome research, public-involvement, service and policy partnerships, and supervision enquiries where there is a clear fit with the programme.
Explore the research programme, people and partnerships, publications, research funding, talks and presentations, teaching and supervision, open research and resources, and leadership and recognition, or get in touch.