About
Harshal is a Data Scientist and User Support Manager within SAIL Databank’s User and Data Support Services team at Swansea University Medical School. His work supports the safe, effective and research-ready use of routinely collected data within the SAIL Trusted Research Environment, with responsibilities across project scoping, disclosure control, value-level metadata development, data quality, and researcher support.
His work sits at the intersection of population data science, mental health and public health research, data quality, metadata, and research data infrastructure. His research experience has focused on the use of linked population-scale data to support mental health and public health research, including previous work on children and young people’s mental health, suicide and self-harm, and policy-relevant reporting for Welsh Government and NHS partners.
Before joining the User and Data Support Services (UDSS) team, Harshal worked as a Mental Health Data Scientist, where his work included data extraction and processing, cohort development, data quality assessment, developing reproducible analytical workflows, and translating applied research questions into structured data requirements.
Harshal has an academic background in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, with experience across routinely collected health and administrative data, education and survey datasets, data linkage, social media-derived datasets, and neuroimaging methods including EEG and fMRI. His broader interests include health data science, mental health epidemiology, value-level metadata development, data quality, computational mental health, and work that bridges population-scale health data with neuroscience and neuroimaging approaches.
Alongside his data science role, Harshal contributes to teaching, mentoring and public involvement activity at Swansea University, including guest lecturing for Graduate Entry Medicine students, support for early-career colleagues, and patient and public involvement work linked to children and young people’s mental health.