Dr Sharon Chi Tak Lee is a clinical research psychologist with over 10 years of academic and industry research experience. She brings deep expertise in leading, designing, and conducting experimental research, mixed-methods evaluations of evidence and implementation, and advanced predictive analytics such as machine learning applied to large-scale real-world datasets. Her work spans healthcare, social care, and education, with a focus on applied research that informs practice and policy to improve outcomes for vulnerable groups.
Sharon holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where she was an awardee of an industry-academia Enterprise-Based Partnership funded by SilverCloud Health, Amwell and Research Ireland. Her research interests focused on treatment prediction and personalisation in mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety, combining digital innovative tools with predictive analytics to find out ‘what treatment works for who’. She assumed project leadership roles subsequently as a postdoctoral research fellow at TCD and as a Digital Health Scientist at SilverCloud Health, Amwell. Across these roles, she has led national evaluations and implementations of digital mental health programmes for Ireland (HSE) and UK (IAPT, NHS), global collaborations on mental health treatment prediction and personalisation and underlying cognitive neuro-mechanisms, as well as system-level evaluations of trauma-informed foster care training and interventions. She has published widely and secured competitive funding to support translational research at the intersection of digital health, mental health, and behavioural science.
At CEI UK, Sharon leads and contributes to a portfolio of projects spanning evidence synthesis, impact evaluations, implementation research, and knowledge mobilisation. Her current work includes a cluster randomised controlled trial of a mentoring intervention to improve school attendance in secondary schools; a scaling evaluation of an early years programme designed to strengthen practitioners’ capacity to teach mathematics; an evaluation of a mentoring programme supporting young people at risk of exclusion from schools; and a practice development role supporting delivery organisations to embed evidence in programmes aimed at improving employability outcomes for marginalised youth.
Sharon is deeply committed to generating and mobilising rigorous, equity-focused evidence to improve outcomes for vulnerable and underserved children, families, and communities. She is particularly passionate about ensuring that research translates into meaningful, actionable insights for those delivering services on the ground, helping to close the gap between what works and what is implemented in practice.