Since September 2020, I have been an MRC Investigator (Programme Leader) working as part of the Efficient Study Design (ESD) theme. My research aims to improve clinical trial design through the development of innovative methods that lie in the intersection between optimisation, machine learning and statistics. These methods may result in efficiency gains (i.e. smaller or faster trials) but face several practical barriers (e.g. a high computational cost) to be widely adopted. These innovations include patient-centric trials – i.e. those having an explicit goal of assigning more trial participants to superior treatments (e.g. an efficacious vaccine). My proposed work includes four main objectives: 1) developing computationally feasible innovative trial designs, 2) improving analysis methods of optimal, patient-centric adaptive trials (estimation and testing); 3) designing innovative trial designs in response of specific emerging challenges (including using adaptive experiments to enhance and personalise m-health apps) and 4) promoting update and appropriate application of these novel designs in practice.