About

🙋‍♀️ Hi, I’m Natasha. Here’s a short bio on me…

Before embarking on years of academic study, I worked as a healthcare assistant in hospitals and care home settings. These experiences inspired me to pursue further study to learn how to improve patient outcomes by developing solutions informed by research. I quickly became interested in the potential for data to provide personalised healthcare, spanning diagnosis, treatment, and long-term prevention.

With a particular interest in mental health research, I studied at Cardiff University and Keele University for an MSc in Neuroimaging and BSc in Psychology, respectively. During this time I developed a curiosity for the interplay between thoughts, behaviours and physiological response. I was then awarded an NIHR PhD scholarship to develop therapies for mental health at The Centre for Translational Neuroimaging, at The Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham.

For my PhD research, I investigated the mechanistic interaction between neural and visceral oscillations during therapeutic interventions and how this influences cognitive control. This research involved experimental and psychophysiological data collection, signal processing, application of novel statistics to rich datasets and creating visualizations using Python, R and MATLAB. My work suggested that optimal neural-visceral coupling may depend on rhythms across multiple physiological systems.

Since completing my PhD, I have worked in several healthcare technology start-ups where I assisted teams to deliver custom contract requests, and leveraged emerging technologies, such as AI and digital health tools, to drive meaningful improvements in user experience and clinical impact. I am now working at a mental health technology start-up, HelloSelf, as an assistant psychologist.

Outside of research I enjoy vegan cooking, gaming, reading, photography, and learning Japanese!

Publications & Appearances

Elliott, N. A., Liddle, E. B., Walker, D. M., & Liddle, P. F. (2025, August). Breathing in synchrony: Exploring neural–visceral effects in Su-soku breath counting. [Preprint]. Authorea. Currently under journal review. https://doi.org/10.22541/au.175534414.40177581/v1

Egede, J. O., Price, D., Krishnan, D. B., Jaiswal, S., Elliott, N.A, Morriss, R., Trigo, M. J. G., Nixon, N., Liddle, P., Greenhalgh, C., and Valstar, M. (2021). Design and evaluation of virtual human-mediated tasks for assessment of depression and anxiety. In Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA ’21). (pp. 52–59) ACM

Elliott, N. A. (2023). Investigating the mechanisms of neural-visceral coupling for therapeutic applications. (Doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham). University of Nottingham Repository. https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/73483/

Elliott, N. A. (2019, April). Developing empathic virtual humans: Establishing central–autonomic interaction [Poster presentation]. MEGUK Conference, Cardiff, UK.

Elliott, N. A. (2016, June). Rewiring depression: Psychophysiological applications of mindfulness [Conference presentation]. JADE Conference, Keele University.