Leandra Bräuninger

Bio

Leandra Bräuninger (they/them; she/her) is a doctoral student researching “Machine Learning for Mitigating Discrimination in Medicine and Healthcare” at the University College London supervised by Dr Brieuc Lehmann and Prof. Ioanna Manolopoulou. Research interests include interdisciplinary approaches to algorithmic fairness, actionable equity, conformal prediction, counterfactual frameworks and causal inference to name a few.

Previously, Leandra held research and/or teaching positions in the areas of statistical fairness in genomics, mathematical malaria prediction, and fundamental biology at the Alan Turing Institute (London, UK), the Mathematical Biology Group at the University of Melbourne (Australia), and the Centre for Active Learning in the Department of Biology at ETH Zurich (Switzerland).

Leandra’s academic degrees in Mathematical Modelling of Global Health (MSc University of Oxford), Data Science and International Relations (BA University of St. Gallen), and work experience in HealthTech startups (Haplo Care, MiData) have led to a keen interest in the intersection of health - equity - technology. More specifically, in AI methods which improve medicine and healthcare for the whole of society (and not just a privileged few). To this end, the focus of the PhD is on the development of new, equitable AI systems with extensive interdisciplinary contextualisation.

Conference Contribution and Talks

presented work at 2024 Greek Stochastics (Folegandros, Greece)
presented work at the ELISE RobustML Workshop 2024 (Helsinki, Finland)
invited Panel Member on the ethical implications of AI use in global health at the 2024 Geneva Health Forum (Geneva, Switzerland)
invited talk on Fairness in AI at the Turing-Roche Knowledge Share Event ([find the recording here](https://youtu.be/Tuz7IGqDAIs?si=gfOEuOz3XVbckbsw))
presented work at Genomics England Research Summit 2023 (London, UK)

Event Organization

Lead of 2025 Data Science for Health Equity Symposium
Lead organiser of the Oxford University Kellogg College Bletchley Park Week 2025: The Women of Bletchley and Computing
Lead of Data Science for Health Equity Session in the International Day of Women in Statistics and Data Science
Lead organiser of the Oxford University Kellogg College Bletchley Park Week 2024: Bletchley and Beyond: Ethics of Computing in Past, Present, and Future
Co-Lead of DSxHE Statistical Methods for Health Equity organising Webinar and Researcher Meetups
Organising team of the 2023 Statistical Methods for Health Equity Symposium at UCL (London, UK)

Scholarships, Grants and Awards

2024 ELISE mobility grant (Helsinki, Finland)
UKRI EPSRC DTP studentship
UCL ISAD Award
FAccT’22 scholarship (Seoul, Korea)

Teaching

Lecture on LSTM and RCNN for the MSc Applied AI for Medical Imaging (UCL)

Zertifikatskurs Digitale Inklusion (Universität Wien)

2015-2021: extensive teaching work at ETH Zurich, Biology courses spanning Fundamental Biology, Computational Biology, Anatomy, and more for undergraduate students reading for degrees such as Biology, Medicine, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Physics, Chemistry etc.

I am open to more teaching and speaking duties at the moment. Do send me an email if you would like me to give lectures or talks.

Projects

Uniphy (Founder)

Uniphy is a network of ambitious women+ who support each other’s growth through cross-sectional knowledge sharing and boutique consulting.

DSxHE (Co-Organiser, Theme Co-Lead)

Data Science for Health Equity (“DSxHE”) is a global community that brings together experts and enthusiasts working at the intersection of data science and health inequities to ensure that the latest research and innovations improve health equity. Leandra is a co-organiser of the community working to define its Strategy & Impact as well as a co-lead of the Statistical Methods for Health Equity Theme.

TrueYouOmics (Scientific & Ethics Advisor)

Leandra advises the HealthTech Startup TrueYouOmics on scientific and ethical matters.

Contact

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if our research interests overlap, if your startup is looking for a research collaborator or scientific advisor or if you are looking for someone to teach or present on the topics of equitable HealthTech.

Email: leandra.braeuninger@gmail.com

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/leandra-braeuninger/

Twitter: @_LeandraBr