Saskia Sanderson joined King’s College London in April 2024. She is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics at the King’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience; Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Behavioural Science and Health at UCL; and Data Science Lead for the NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (TRC) Mission.

Saskia’s previous roles include Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York, US, and Chief Behavioural Scientist on the founding leadership team of Our Future Health.

Research interests

• Psychology
• Behavioural Science
• Data Science
• Population Health
• Genomics

Saskia holds a PhD (Title: Psychological Aspects of Genetic Testing for Complex Disease Susceptibility) from UCL. She is a BPS Chartered Psychologist, and a mixed-methods researcher with expertise in qualitative and quantitative methodologies, working across data science, behavioural science and genomics.

A central theme of Saskia’s research is Psychology Applied to Genomics. This research investigates cognitive, emotional and behavioural aspects of genomics for population health, including consent, decision-making, risk communication, psychological and behavioural responses to personal genomics-informed results.

Saskia’s human experience research (HXR) interests include combining qualitative methods such as reflexive thematic analysis with AI-augmented approaches (NLP, LLMs) to enable people’s voices to be heard and integrated into research responsibly, effectively and at scale.

Expertise and public engagement

• Podcast interviews: Risky Talk with Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, “Communicating Genetic Risk” 2020 
• Writing articles for newspapers: The Guardian, There could soon be a test to detect cancer years in advance, would you take it? (Feb 2020) 
• Giving public talks, e.g. TEDx talk, Would You Have Your Genome Sequenced 2018
• Participating in panels and webinars, e.g.

Benefits and risks of screening: Cancer as an exemplar. 2022. 

Behaviour Change Briefing: Co-design in Practice 2021

Genomics England Research Seminar June 2022 - Saskia Sanderson, Celine Lewis and Nick Owen 

• Animated videos:

  My Genome Sequence

  Whole Genome Sequencing and You 

Publications

1. Cook MB, Adams N, Adjetey A, Arathimos R, Balabanovic M, Blackwood R, Booth A, Cairns BJ, Connell A, Ellis S, Elsworth B, Evans K, Forman A, Gradovich E, Gretton C, Grimm F, Hunter DJ, Lipinski K, Lord J, Luff J, Maleady-Crowe F, Moran R, North S, Peel A, van der Plaat D, Purves K, Reddington F, Roddam A, Sanderson SC, Sprosen T, Steventon A, Turnbull I, Vestesson E, Ali R. Cohort Profile: Our Future Health. Int J Epidemiol. 2025 Oct 14;54(6). doi: 10.1093/ije/dyaf171. PubMed PMID: 41092131; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC12527338.

2. Sanderson SC, Inouye M. Psychological and behavioural considerations for integrating polygenic risk scores for disease into clinical practice. Nat Hum Behav. 2025 Jun;9(6):1098-1106. doi: 10.1038/s41562-025-02200-x. Epub 2025 May 12. Review. PubMed PMID: 40355674.

3. Schunkert H, Di Angelantonio E, Inouye M, Patel RS, Ripatti S, Widen E, Sanderson SC, Kaski JP, McEvoy JW, Vardas P, Wood A, Aboyans V, Vassiliou VS, Visseren FLJ, Lopes LR, Elliott P, Kavousi M. Clinical utility and implementation of polygenic risk scores for predicting cardiovascular disease: A clinical consensus statement of the ESC Council on Cardiovascular Genomics, the ESC Cardiovascular Risk Collaboration, and the European Association of Preventive Cardiology. Eur Heart J. 2025 Apr 15;46(15):1372-1383. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae649. PubMed PMID: 39906985; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11997548.

4. Cook MB, Sanderson SC, Deanfield JE, Reddington F, Roddam A, Hunter DJ, Ali R. Our Future Health: a unique global resource for discovery and translational research. Nat Med. 2025 Mar;31(3):728-730. doi: 10.1038/s41591-024-03438-0. PubMed PMID: 39838119.

5. Polygenic Risk Score Task Force of the International Common Disease Alliance: Adeyemo A, Balaconis MK, Darnes DR, Fatumo S, Granados Moreno P, Hodonsky CJ, Inouye M, Kanai M, Kato K, Knoppers BM, Lewis AC, Martin AR, McCarthy MI, Meyer MN, Okada Y, Richards JB, Richter L, Ripatti S, Rotimi CN, Sanderson SC, Sturm AC, Verdugo RA, Widen E, Willer CJ, Wojcik GL, Zhou A. Responsible use of polygenic risk scores in the clinic: potential benefits, risks and gaps. Nat Med. 2021 Nov;27(11):1876-1884. doi: 10.1038/s41591-021-01549-6. Epub 2021 Nov 15. Review. PubMed PMID: 34782789.

6. Sanderson SC, Hill M, Patch C, Searle B, Lewis C, Chitty LS. Delivering genome sequencing in clinical practice: an interview study with healthcare professionals involved in the 100 000 Genomes Project. BMJ Open. 2019 Nov 3;9(11):e029699. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-029699. PubMed PMID: 31685495; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6858183.

7. Horowitz CR, Orlando LA, Slavotinek AM, Peterson J, Angelo F, Biesecker B, Bonham VL, Cameron LD, Fullerton SM, Gelb BD, Goddard KAB, Hailu B, Hart R, Hindorff LA, Jarvik GP, Kaufman D, Kenny EE, Knight SJ, Koenig BA, Korf BR, Madden E, McGuire AL, Ou J, Wasserstein MP, Robinson M, Leventhal H, Sanderson SC. The Genomic Medicine Integrative Research Framework: A Conceptual Framework for Conducting Genomic Medicine Research. Am J Hum Genet. 2019 Jun 6;104(6):1088-1096. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2019.04.006. Epub 2019 May 16. PubMed PMID: 31104772; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6556906.

8. Sanderson SC, Brothers KB, Mercaldo ND, Clayton EW, Antommaria AHM, Aufox SA, Brilliant MH, Campos D, Carrell DS, Connolly J, Conway P, Fullerton SM, Garrison NA, Horowitz CR, Jarvik GP, Kaufman D, Kitchner TE, Li R, Ludman EJ, McCarty CA, McCormick JB, McManus VD, Myers MF, Scrol A, Williams JL, Shrubsole MJ, Schildcrout JS, Smith ME, Holm IA. Public Attitudes toward Consent and Data Sharing in Biobank Research: A Large Multi-site Experimental Survey in the US. Am J Hum Genet. 2017 Mar 2;100(3):414-427. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2017.01.021. Epub 2017 Feb 9. PubMed PMID: 28190457; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5339111.

9. Sanderson SC, Linderman MD, Suckiel SA, Zinberg R, Wasserstein M, Kasarskis A, Diaz GA, Schadt EE. Psychological and behavioural impact of returning personal results from whole-genome sequencing: the HealthSeq project. Eur J Hum Genet. 2017 Feb;25(3):280-292. doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2016.178. Epub 2017 Jan 4. PubMed PMID: 28051073; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5315514.

10. Garrison NA, Sathe NA, Antommaria AH, Holm IA, Sanderson SC, Smith ME, McPheeters ML, Clayton EW. A systematic literature review of individuals' perspectives on broad consent and data sharing in the United States. Genet Med. 2016 Jul;18(7):663-71. doi: 10.1038/gim.2015.138. Epub 2015 Nov 19. PubMed PMID: 26583683; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4873460.