Naja Hulvej Rod

Naja Hulvej Rod is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Copenhagen and Director of the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center since 2024. She leads the Complexity and Big Data Group, pioneering interdisciplinary approaches that integrate epidemiology, data science, and complex systems theory to address critical public health challenges through large-scale register data and innovative methodologies.

Education:

• DMSc in Medicine, University of Copenhagen, 2014
• PhD in Epidemiology, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 2007
• Master of Public Health Science, University of Copenhagen, 2004

Research Interests: Professor Rod's work centers on sleep health, health inequality, mental health, and early life adversity, with groundbreaking applications of complex systems theory and causal inference methods. She investigates how social and biological factors across the life course determine health outcomes, utilizing unique resources like the Danish Life Course Cohort (DANLIFE) to examine the health consequences of social and environmental adversities through advanced life course modeling and digital phenotyping.

Publication Trends: Her recent publications (2023-2025) reveal a strong emphasis on childhood adversity trajectories and their lifelong health impacts, increasingly incorporating smartphone tracking data (SmartSleep study) and complex systems modeling. She bridges epidemiology with artificial intelligence and systems science to analyze mental health patterns, sleep disorders, and social vulnerability, demonstrating methodological innovation in handling complex public health data.

Scientific Awards:

• Sapere Aude Starting Grant
• Elite Research Prize (2022)
• ERC Consolidator Grant (2023)

Advising and Grants: Professor Rod has supervised 19 PhD students to completion and currently mentors one PhD candidate. As primary investigator, she has secured 11.53 million EUR in research funding, leading major projects including DANLIFE (2+ million individuals), SmartSleep (mobile phone use and sleep), Corona Minds (citizen science pandemic study), and WHALE (hospital employee well-being). Her leadership includes founding the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center and chairing Denmark's Council for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.

Labs and Teams: She directs the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center, a multidisciplinary hub uniting epidemiologists, data scientists, social scientists, and clinicians. Her Complexity and Big Data Group develops novel analytical frameworks for complex health systems, with active collaborations across European institutions and participation in international committees including the Swedish and Finnish Research Councils.