[3][4] van der Schaar focuses on medical applications of computer engineering, including AI-enabled personalized medicine.

[9][10] In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, van der Schaar's research group was part of a collaboration with the UK National Health Service which used machine learning to predict shortages of ICU beds and ventilators in English hospitals.

[11] As of 2020, van der Schaar has published over 250 academic journal articles and submitted over 275 conference papers, and her work has resulted in 35 US patents and contributed to over 45 international standards.

[12] van der Schaar was elected as a Fellow of the IEEE in 2009, and she has held a fellowship with the Alan Turing Institute since 2016.

[16] In 2019, a Nesta report determined that van der Schaar was the most-cited female AI researcher in the UK.