Helena Coggan

Helena Coggan

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Computational Health Informatics Program

Boston Children's Hospital · Harvard Medical School

helena.coggan@childrens.harvard.edu

I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Computational Health Informatics Program at Boston Children's Hospital, working with William La Cava. My research concerns clinical decision support tools for use in the emergency department, developed using large-scale electronic health record databases.

Before moving to Boston, I completed my PhD at University College London (2025). My doctoral thesis focused on agent-based simulations of lung tumour evolution, and was supervised by Prof. Jasmin Fisher with support from Profs. Nicholas McGranahan and Karen M. Page. I obtained undergraduate and master's degrees in physics from the University of Cambridge (2017-2021), graduating with a high first.

Research Interests

Clinical machine learning · Epidemiology of health disparities · Emergency medicine · Health policy · Cancer evolution · Agent-based modelling

Publications

Clone copy number diversity is linked to survival in lung cancer
K. Grigoriadis*, P. Pawlik*, A. Bunkum, H. Coggan, … and N. McGranahan. Nature, 2025. (*joint first authors) · Paper
Deciphering the influence of demographic factors on the treatment of pediatric patients in the emergency department
H. Coggan, A. Bischops, … and William G. La Cava. Biocomputing 2026, 2025. · Paper
An agent-based modelling framework to study growth mechanisms in EGFR-L858R mutant cell alveolar type II cells
H. Coggan, C. E. Weeden, P. Pearce, M. P. Dalwadi, A. Magness, C. Swanton, and K. M. Page. Royal Society Open Science, 2024. · Paper
A novel interpretable machine learning algorithm to identify optimal parameter space for cancer growth
H. Coggan, H. A. Terre, and P. Liò. Frontiers in Big Data, 2022. · Paper
The role of evolutionary game theory in spatial and nonspatial models of the survival of cooperation in cancer: a review
H. Coggan and K. M. Page. Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2022. · Paper

Preprints & Manuscripts in Preparation

The clinical impact of phenotypic plasticity in non-small cell lung cancer
H. Coggan*, J.R.M. Black*, T. Jones*, … J. Fisher and N. McGranahan. In preparation. (*joint first authors)
Agent-based simulations of lung tumour evolution suggest ongoing cell competition drives clonal expansion
H. Coggan, J.R.M. Black, C. Martinez-Ruiz, … J. Fisher and N. McGranahan. bioRxiv, 2025. · Preprint
Demographic factors associated with triage acuity, admission and length of stay during adult emergency department visits
H. Coggan, P. Chaudari, … and William G. La Cava. arXiv, 2025. · Preprint

Conferences & Workshops

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing, Jan 2026 contributed talk
Bioinference, Warwick, UK, Jun 2024 contributed talk
Society for Mathematical Biology Annual Meeting, Jul 2023 invited talk
Francis Crick Institute PhD Student Symposium, Jul 2023 best first-year speaker
British Applied Mathematics Conference, Apr 2023 contributed talk
American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, Apr 2023 poster
Integrated Mathematical Oncology Workshop, Oct 2022 poster
European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology, Sep 2022 poster
UK Graduate Modelling Camp, Jun 2022 best student in group

Contact

The best way to contact me is via email: helena dot coggan at childrens dot harvard dot edu.

Other Writing

In another life I was a fantasy novelist (The Catalyst (2015), The Reaction (2016), The Orphanage of Gods (2019), The Witchling's Girl (2021), all Hodder and Stoughton). If that's how you found this website, hello!