Jo Knight is a Professor of Applied Data Science within Lancaster Medical School. In July 2019 she became the Co-Director of the Data Science Institute having been health theme lead since 2016. Knight previously worked at the University of Toronto and Kings College London after getting her PhD at Queen Mary University London. Knight has two main areas of research; analyses genetic data to identify variants that increase risk of complex traits and the use of routinely collected health data to improve health outcomes. Knight publishes both applied and methodological work in journals including Nature and Nature Genetics. She has won funding from a range of sources including the MRC, Wellcome and the Canadian Institute of Health Research.